Новости за 21.02.2018

Twitter has seemingly suspended thousands of suspected bot accounts, and some conservatives are claiming it’s a deliberate political crackdown, or “Twitter Lockout.” This morning, a number of right-leaning users complained about losing dramatic numbers of followers — including Michael Flynn, Jr., “alt-right” figurehead Richard Spencer, journalist Cassandra Fairbanks, and Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson.

Last fall, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos charged his company’s studio division to produce bigger shows with a “global appeal,” in an attempt to compete with other streaming video companies in the race to produce high-end original content. Since then, Amazon has moved quickly to begin developing an impressive slate of genre television shows that include adaptations of novels such as Ringworld, Snow Crash, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Now, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Amazon has acquired the rights to another huge book... Читать дальше...

Truly wireless headphones are the holy grail for Bluetooth headphone companies, but with the exception of a couple of models — like Apple’s AirPods — it seems like most of the industry is still trying to figure out how to get them to work.

English filmmaker Alex Garland has the right to demonstrate a bit of creative ego. After finding success with his debut novel The Beach at age 26, he moved to screenwriting, scripting the genre favorites 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Dredd. He seamlessly transitioned to directing with Ex Machina, a cerebral, thought-provoking look at artificial intelligence, personal agency, and what it means to be human. But at a Beverly Hills interview about his newest film, Annihilation, he came across as confident but surprisingly humble. Читать дальше...

Qualcomm has revealed a new reference design for a Snapdragon 845 VR headset today. The headset uses the similarly named mobile Snapdragon 845 system architecture that the company announced last month, which can be used for VR and AR.

T-Mobile and AT&T have added their commitments to sell the new Windows 10 Always Connected PC devices that use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile platform when they arrive at some point this year. Verizon and Sprint announced their commitments earlier this year.

Now that the dust has settled from SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy mission, the company is getting back to its routine with another Falcon 9 launch. The rocket is slated to take off from California this morning, sending up an Earth-observation satellite called Paz for Spain. But the vehicle will also have two additional satellites hitchhiking along for the ride: prototype probes built by SpaceX to test out the technology needed to beam down internet from space.

Ampler Bikes is the plucky electric bicycle startup founded by a trio of childhood friends in Estonia. The company has shipped more than 800 smart bikes to 21 countries since the conclusion of its successful Indiegogo campaign in 2016, according to Ampler’s founders. Now they’re back with three new pedal-assist models that incorporate customer feedback to improve the overall commuting experience. The Curt, Stout, and Stellar models are all handmade in Tallinn with an estimated range of 70 km (43.5... Читать дальше...

UberPool has long occupied a weird place in the ride-hailing company’s lineup of services. Riders love it because its so cheap, but drivers hate it because of the stress of ferrying multiple passengers to a variety of destinations. And the company’s executives are torn between the belief that UberPool best personifies their long-term mission of reducing the number of vehicles on the road and the millions of dollars in subsidies they need to spend in order to keep it running.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will appear as himself on The Big Bang Theory next month. The episode, which CNN reports will air in late March, will see Penny (Kaley Cuoco) hosting Gates at work, with her friends trying to do everything to meet him. The show is full of tech-obsessed characters, who will no doubt be excited to see superhero Bill Gates appear.

The app responsible for popularizing swipeable virtual keyboards has been discontinued. Nuance ended development this month of Swype for both iOS and Android, six years after it bought the company behind the influential keyboard app for around $100 million.

Following AT&T’s pledge last month to build out a true 5G network by the end of the year, the telecom has announced its first three of 12 locations that will get standards-based, mobile 5G by the end of the year. The company says two Texas cities, Dallas and Waco, are on the list, as well as Atlanta, Georgia. An AT&T spokesperson says additional cities will be “announced in the coming months, rounding out the dozen we have committed to hit this year.”

Porsche hasn’t shied away from making a big push for electrification in its future lineup, even significantly boosting its investment in the full EVs and plug-in hybrids. But one type of propulsion may be running on borrowed time at the German automaker.

When we talk about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence, the emphasis is usually on the unintended side effects. We worry that we might accidentally create a super-intelligent AI and forget to program it with a conscience; or that we’ll deploy criminal sentencing algorithms that have soaked up the racist biases of their training data.

By the time Samsung’s Unpacked event for the Galaxy S9 rolls around, there will be very little (if anything) left to the imagination. We know what it’ll look like, what the specs are, and even have a good idea of the release date. You’ll probably have to wait a couple weeks before you can feel the phone in your own hands, but according to XDA Developers, Samsung is going to let attendees at its Mobile World Congress presser visualize that part with the help of augmented reality.

It was only a mere week ago that the world got to see what Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robot dog has been up to. Not only did it make a new friend, it also learned how to open doors for said friend. How sweet.

As of today, Flixster Video is officially gone. Fandango bought the site in 2016, and has been sending users regular emails over the past several months about the shutdown, as reported by Android Police. The website is no longer operational, and now only points people to its mobile app, which can still be used for getting movie reviews and tickets.

Reality shows, on the whole, have never been particularly ethical endeavors. From beauty pageants where women got plastic surgery makeovers to substance abuse intervention shows that allowed participants to drive under the influence of drugs and alcohol, their interest has always been less in exploring the human condition and more in producing the most outlandish, desperate, and provocative behavior possible for the entertainment of the audience.

More than six months after Citymapper launched its own officially licensed bus route in East London, the transportation app is shutting down the project in favor of becoming a private taxi operator, according to the Financial Times. London’s transportation authority, Transport for London (TfL), confirmed to the outlet earlier today that it has granted Citymapper a license to operate a taxi service, though there are no details about the forthcoming service.

Bigelow Aerospace — the Las Vegas-based company manufacturing space habitats — is starting a spinoff venture aimed at managing any modules that the company deploys into space. Called Bigelow Space Operations (BSO), the new company will be responsible for selling Bigelow’s habitats to customers, such as NASA, foreign countries, and other private companies. But first, BSO will try to figure out what kind of business exists exactly in lower Earth orbit, the area of space where the ISS currently resides. Читать дальше...