Новости за 28.07.2022

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

After two straight days of afternoon public restocks for the PlayStation 5, Sony is going for the three-peat. The console maker has opened up another public queue to buy PS5 consoles, and you can join in right now. Pending availability after you get through the queue, you may have the chance to buy a standard PS5 for $499.99, a Digital Edition for $399.99, or a bundle of either with a digital voucher for a download of Horizon Forbidden West for an additional $50 (which is a discount, by the way). Читать дальше...

Image: Outerloop Games

The Annapurna Interactive Showcase 2022 took a somewhat different approach to the video game publisher summer showcase format. Instead of a fire hose of trailers, sizzle reels, and gameplay videos, Annapurna slowed it down a bit, doing all of the above while also taking time to show off the people who are making some of the best indie games in the industry.

It’s making several changes to the Play Store. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is trying to cut down on annoying, unskippable ads in Android apps and overall bad behavior in the Play Store (via TechCrunch). The company announced wide-ranging policy changes on Wednesday that update rules across several categories to be more specific, clamping down on loopholes developers may have used to skirt existing rules.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It might get cheaper and easier to buy popular tech products, like gaming consoles and graphics cards, after Congress approved $52 billion in funding for domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP via Getty Images

Democrats are recharging the fight for net neutrality by introducing a new bill on Thursday that would codify the deeply divisive open internet rules.

Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Say goodbye to the TikTok-style feed and at least some of those recommendations

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

It’s been a long road for the “Build Back Better” plan — but Wednesday night, after over a year of both public and private negotiations, we finally saw a proposal that could actually clear Congress. Renamed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” the new Sen. Manchin-endorsed proposal would raise roughly $740 billion in revenue through a combination of tax increases and price negotiation — and divert $370 billion of that money to fighting climate change. If it makes it through Congress... Читать дальше...

SoulCycle woke up and chose violence with this campaign. | Image: SoulCycle, Equinox

SoulCycle isn’t pulling any punches with its latest campaign that offers Peloton users free in-person classes... if they trade in their bikes. The move comes while Peloton is still dealing with excess inventory after misjudging post-quarantine demand.

John Allen, the host of hit podcast MrBallen.

In each episode of MrBallen, series host John Allen appears in the center of the frame, usually wearing a plaid shirt with a couple of buttons undone and a baseball cap turned backward, and slowly talks viewers through the events of a “strange, dark, and mysterious” true crime story. Episodes with titles like “What I saw in my room still haunts me” and “Real-life ‘ghost ship’ has a SECRET,” bring in more than 40 million monthly views — a massive... Читать дальше...

Google’s premium buds have more features — without deal-breaking flaws

Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

JetBlue and Spirit announced a $3.8 billion merger agreement after a previous deal between Spirit and Frontier Airlines fell apart Wednesday. The newly merged airline will be the fifth-largest in the US in a potential challenge to the dominance of the “Big Four” carriers.

Image: Instagram

Instagram will begin asking some US users for race and ethnicity data in order to study how different groups experience the platform, the company says in a blog post published today.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Spotify has announced another new way to mix and match music on its service with your friends. Its new Friends Mix playlist type aims to get you out of your comfort zone with tracks that your friends have been listening to. Unlike Blend, one of its other personalized playlist types that merges a few of your recent faves with some from a pal, Friends Mix is meant to be like getting a big mixtape full of recommendations that all of your friends would give you. Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

From Elon Musk Twitter impersonators to dubious Discord chats, cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) scammers have stolen billions of dollars from investors over the last few years. But now, politicians and law enforcement are turning their attention to Apple and Google — companies that operate huge app stores — and how they review fraudulent crypto apps.

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

Senator Joe Manchin has had a change of heart about electric vehicles.

PS-specific buttons, Xbox analog stick arrangement.

Sony has enlisted accessory company Backbone to make a PlayStation-ified version of the excellent Backbone One mobile controller for iPhone that’s available now from Backbone and Best Buy. It gives off PS Vita vibes, except somehow, Sony was okay with Backbone keeping its Xbox-like analog stick arrangement. The $99.99 controller, which can be pulled open to fit iPhones as small as the 13 Mini and as big as the 13 Pro Max, comes in a new mix of white and black... Читать дальше...

China’s Long March 5B rocket ahead of launch | Photo credit should read CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images

Sometime this weekend, a massive booster from a Chinese rocket will begin an uncontrolled fall back to Earth from space — and because of its considerable size and weight, parts of it may survive the descent through our planet’s atmosphere and hit the ground. The chances of the rocket hitting anyone and killing them are exceedingly rare, but a similar falling Chinese rocket last year sparked major concern worldwide... Читать дальше...

This prototype proton exchange membrane, or PEM, fuel cell system can provide emissions-free backup power to about 10,000 data center servers. | Image: Microsoft / John Brecher

Microsoft has reached a new milestone in its effort to ditch diesel in favor of cleaner energy at its data centers. The company announced today that it successfully tested a hydrogen fuel cell system powerful enough to replace a traditional diesel-powered backup generator at a large data center.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Comcast didn’t add any new broadband subscribers between April and June, marking the first time the company has failed to grow its high-speed internet business. Broadband figures stayed flat from Q1 at 32.2 million subscribers, the company announced in its Q2 2022 earnings release this morning.

Why bother to design your own robots when you can just reuse what nature created?

A protein structure identified by AlphaFold. | Image: DeepMind

DeepMind is releasing a free expanded database with its predictions of the structure of nearly every protein known to science, the company, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, announced today.

Photo by Zhu Haipeng/VCG via Getty Images

The power demands of data centers can be staggering, with larger facilities using as much electricity as tens of thousands of homes. Now, in parts of London, those energy requirements are reportedly stopping developers from building new houses because there’s simply not enough electricity to go around.

Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al Yankovic. | Image: Roku

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a biopic about the musician starring Daniel Radcliffe, will release on November 4th on The Roku Channel, the streaming company has announced. The film will be available to stream everywhere where Roku’s free service is available, and is the latest step in the company’s push into producing original content that reportedly includes as many as 50 shows.

Ghost Phone. | Image: Snap

Snap has launched its first in-Snapchat augmented reality game, a spooky “found phone” title called Ghost Phone. In the game, you’ll work to solve the mystery of what happened to the previous owner of a smartphone, and you’ll quickly learn that things are just a little bit... ghastly.

Image: Ford

Ford, the leading automaker when it comes to making and selling specially designed vehicles for law enforcement, revealed the F-150 Lightning Pro SSV, an electric truck specially designed for law enforcement.