Новости за 02.11.2022

Qualcomm is expecting phone sales to be less than expected. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Qualcomm, one of the primary providers of chips and modems in phones, is predicting that phone sales will be down much more than expected in 2022 due to the uncertain economic environment, according to the company’s latest earnings release published Wednesday.

Illustration: The Verge

Google is adding package tracking features to Gmail, which should make it easier to see where your orders are at a glance while you scroll through your emails. In a blog post on Wednesday, the company says you’ll start seeing “a simple, helpful view of your package tracking and delivery information right in your inbox” in the next few weeks.

Fire tablets and other Alexa-enabled gadgets are currently on sale at Amazon. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

It’s Alexa’s birthday, and to celebrate, Amazon is discounting a wide range of its smart home products, including Echo devices, Fire TVs, Blink video doorbell systems, and Fire tablets. We’ve outlined a few highlights here that we think are worth checking out. Of course, plenty of other retailers are already kicking off early Black Friday sales, too, if you’re looking for discounts outside of the Amazon ecosystem. Читать дальше...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

OpenSea has announced it will start freezing sales for NFTs that it suspects have been stolen in an attempt to stop scammers and hackers from flipping ill-gotten tokens. In a blog post on Wednesday, the company said it’s “beginning to test a new system” that will mark NFTs caught up in suspicious transactions as “under review,” blocking people from buying them using the platform.

Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge

It’s been six days since Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter, and the changes have been both furious and fast. He’s proposed cataclysmic layoffs — somewhere between 50 percent and 75 percent of the company’s staff, depending on which reports bear out. He’s established an entirely new user tier, in which users will pay $8 a month (formerly $20) to receive algorithm boosts and the prestige of verification. He’s also proposed a paywall feature for... Читать дальше...

The company will assemble batteries primarily for Tesla. | Image: Panasonic

Four months after selecting De Soto, Kansas, as the location of its future EV battery plant, Panasonic has broken ground on the $4 billion facility — an important step as the US aims to increase the number of electric vehicle batteries that are assembled domestically.

Secretlabs is finally giving you a way to wash your gaming chair and swap aesthetics | Image: Secretlabs

Secretlabs, a company that’s become synonymous with gaming chairs, is finally giving us a better way to keep your seat clean. Secretlab Skins are available to purchase now directly through Secretlabs and allow you to finally wash off the sweat stains in your gaming chair, you filthy try-hard.

Image: Google

Google Play Games is launching in open beta in the US today, allowing anyone to try out a selection of Android games on PC. Google launched an initial beta of the software on Windows PCs earlier this year, but it was limited to Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. Today’s launch sees the beta service expand to the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Image: Comcast

Comcast and Charter have settled on a name for the streaming hardware ecosystem it hopes will give Roku a run for its money: Xumo. If this sounds familiar, it’s because this is the name of the free ad-supported streaming TV service Comcast acquired in 2020, which will now go by Xumo Play. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like Comcast thinks Xumo is a super rad name and wants to use it again just to make sure everyone has heard how rad it sounds.

The show looks pretty bleak, just like the games. | Image: HBO

The TV adaptation of PlayStation’s postapocalyptic game series The Last of Us debuts on HBO and HBO Max on January 15th. Text in HBO Max spoiled the release date earlier this week, but you can actually circle January 15th on your calendars now that the date has been officially announced. The first season will have nine episodes.

The limited-edition 911 Soundbar 2.0 Pro weighs a whopping 143 pounds and features a real Porsche 992 GT3 exhaust. | Image: Porsche Design

Would you buy a $12,000 speaker? Okay, probably not, but would you buy one if it were built into a genuine Porsche 992 GT3 exhaust? The Porsche 911 Soundbar 2.0 Pro is an impractical (but nonetheless rad) custom 2.1.2-channel Dolby Atmos-capable speaker from Porsche Design that’s done just that (via What Hi-Fi, TweakTown).

Google’s Douglas Eck introducing Wordcraft, an AI-powered creative writing tool, at Google AI@. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

Remember that time Google showed off its artificial intelligence prowess by demoing conversations with Pluto and a paper airplane? That was powered by LaMDA, one of Google’s latest-generation conversational AI models. Now, Google’s using LaMDA to build Wordcraft, a prototype writing tool that can help creative writers craft new stories.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Paramount chief financial officer Naveen Chopra said on an earnings call Wednesday that the company sees “opportunities to increase price on Paramount Plus” and that we’ll see it “do that in the future.” The ad-supported version of Paramount Plus currently costs $4.99 per month (or $49.99 per year), while the commercial-free Premium plan costs $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year).

LG’s A2 may not have every feature that’s present in pricier OLEDs, but it can still deliver a phenomenal picture. | LG

Having an OLED 4K TV on your wish list used to be a dream that few could afford to make come true, but that’s not the case anymore. If you’re looking for something in the $600 range, Best Buy has the 48-inch LG A2 for $569.99. The previous-gen A1 never dropped so low in price, so it’s great to see that this special discount has stuck around for the past couple of weeks. Читать дальше...

Flooding in Sanford, Florida, after Hurricane Ian. | Photo by Pauln Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Google announced a big expansion of its flood forecasting and wildfire tracking services today. It launched a tool called Flood Hub globally, which patches together forecasting across 20 countries. Google is also rolling out improved wildfire tracking to a few more countries after piloting the program in the US.

The new Arlo Pro 5S 2K camera. | Image: Arlo

Arlo has announced its new Pro 5S 2K security camera, which offers features like dual-band Wi-Fi for versatile connectivity, a 160-degree viewing angle, 2K resolution with HDR, a spotlight and siren built-in, and 30 percent longer battery life than the previous Pro 4. It’s now available for preorder at Best Buy and Arlo’s website for $249.99, and it will ship by December 6th.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is exploring the option to let users put video content behind a paywall, according to an internal company email obtained by The Washington Post. Mockups suggest users would be able to enable the “Paywalled Video” feature after adding video content to a tweet, and then choose from preset prices, such as $1, $2, $5, or $10. Other users would be able to like or retweet the content regardless of whether they’ve paid to view it.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5, with its pixelated lights and evocative design, is part of a trend of weird cars that are trying to make a statement in the age of electrification. | Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

It’s been a real WTF kind of year for car releases, new machines in new shapes with offbeat marketing leaning on gimmicky features that nobody asked for. Gimmicks are nothing new, but as I was pondering yet another incredibly quick, perfectly quiet EV, it occurred to me that I’ve been... Читать дальше...

The mounting system attaches a Leica M-series lens to Xiaomi’s phone. | Image: Agatha Tang

Xiaomi’s new concept phone allows a full size Leica camera lens to be attached to the back of a prototype version of its 12S Ultra. The version of the smartphone released earlier this year is already notable for having a 1-inch-type camera sensor on its rear, which is far larger than those typically used in phones and more in line with what you might find in a compact standalone camera. Xiaomi’s... Читать дальше...

Google Lens is now built into its search bar.

Google has been integrating its Lens image recognition tech into several of its products for quite a while now, including Google Photos and Chrome, but now it’s putting it front and center. As 9to5Google points out, Google’s added a Lens button right to its home page, in its famous search bar. That’s a big deal, according to Rajan Patel, a vice president of engineering at Google who’s in charge of Search and Lens — as he said on Tuesday, the Google homepage doesn’t change often. Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

We’re rounding up all of the best deals from across the internet to help you cross some names off your holiday shopping list.

Did you know Google had a separate Street View Map? I didn’t. | Illustration: The Verge

Google will be pulling the standalone Street View app from app stores in the “coming weeks” and discontinuing support for the app in March 2023, spokesperson Madison Gouveia confirmed in a statement to The Verge. 9to5Google first spotted evidence in a recent update indicating the search giant was planning to move on from the app.

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s rolling out a feature to Office Insiders that lets you insert images from your Android smartphones directly into a web-based Word or PowerPoint file. While Microsoft already offers ways to transfer content between Windows PCs and Android devices via the Phone Link app Microsoft revamped back in March, this marks the first time it’s building the functionality into one of its apps.

Image: AMD

AMD was riding high last year as consumers bought computers in droves and cryptocurrency miners snapped up every GPU they could get, but this year, the company has come crashing down to the ground. While it’s bringing in more money than it was before, thanks in part to better sales in the data center and gaming space, its third quarter profits dropped by 93 percent compared to last year.

Illustration: The Verge

Tumblr has made an update it hinted at in September, changing its rules to allow nudity — but not sexually explicit images — on the platform.