Новости за 12.03.2018

The only things that actually move on a modern smartphone these days are the silencing switch, the lock button, a volume rocker, and (if you’re lucky) a dedicated button for Bixby.

Social Animals, the feature-length debut from documentary director Jonathan Ignatius Green, stars three kids: self-taught New York street photographer Humza Deas, dancer and aspiring fashion brand mogul Kaylyn Slevin, and Ohio high school student Emma Crockett, who stands in for the everyman teen. They talk about their lives, which means they talk about Instagram — how it’s helped them, how it’s harmed them, what the rules are, what people can use it for, why they might care.

A calendar app in the Mac App Store has been mining cryptocurrency in the background in exchange for giving users additional features — and an option to opt out of mining has been broken. So far, Apple has not taken the scheduling app Calendar 2 down, even after Ars Technica informed the company that Calendar 2 has been mining virtual currency.

At SXSW 2018, I was invited to take part in a four-day immersive story experience called a SimuLife. Mounted by the Austin-based creative lab Interactive Deep Dive, SimuLife is meant to blur the line between fantasy and reality by letting me interact with the story as part of daily life. It’s like David Fincher’s movie The Game, executed in the real world. Other than those broad edicts, I wasn’t given any advance information about the experience. I’m documenting my journey through the story — wherever it leads. Читать дальше...

Tesla drivers may enjoy a vast network of Supercharger stations across the US, but it’s coming at a cost: the price of charging. The automaker has quietly raised prices per kilowatt hour for using the fast-charging stations.

China’s police have been testing sunglasses with built-in facial recognition since at least last month to catch suspects and those traveling under false identities. Now China is expanding the facial recognition sunglasses program as police are beginning to use them in the outskirts of Beijing, according to Reuters. The program was used as extra security while Parliament voted to extend Xi Jinping’s presidency to a lifetime rule, and paralleled the increased censorship and surveillance measures seen throughout China. Читать дальше...

Apple Maps has been getting a few more features to keep up with the likes of Google Maps. Now those features include more comprehensive bike-sharing information for various global cities.

An influx of rumors suggest that we should expect cheaper iPads and MacBooks this year. First, we know that the MacBook Air may be getting a less-expensive refresh, as hinted by multiple reports. The latest comes from DigiTimes, which today reported that Apple will launch a new 13.3-inch “entry-level” MacBook late in Q2 this year.

The PGA Tour is now bringing the golf course to your home through Apple’s augmented reality platform. Using Apple’s ARKit in iOS 11, the PGA Tour has made a new app called PGA Tour AR that lets you compare professional golfers against each other and check out featured golf holes. You’ll be able to better visualize players’ strokes and the angles from which they sank the balls.

There are legitimate reasons to hate Ernest Cline’s bestselling 2011 novel Ready Player One, and many of them are summed up in the paragraph where the teenage protagonist, Wade Watts, describes the virtual car he constructed for himself in the vast online world where he spends most of his waking hours:

Robot avatars have been a sci-fi staple for decades, letting fictional humans remotely carry out delicate and dextrous tasks, from hospital care to mining on the Moon. But, as usual, our imagination outstrips reality. The best commercially available “avatars” are telepresence bots, which are little more than iPads on wheels, while cutting-edge humanoid robots look flashy but struggle to keep their balance. The X Prize Foundation wants to change this, and today, it announced its latest challenge: building “real-world avatars” by 2021. Читать дальше...

Uber’s food delivery service Uber Eats is expanding to over 100 cities in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, TechCrunch reports. Specifically, the service will launch for the first time in Ireland, Egypt, Kenya, Ukraine, Romania, and the Czech Republic, along with previously announced markets around the globe, a spokesperson confirmed.

Apple is buying a digital magazine subscription service known as the “Netflix of magazines,” which lets readers access over 200 magazines for a monthly fee. The acquisition of the service Texture, owned by Next Issue Media, comes at a time when news publishing as an industry is being shaken up by fake news accusations and Facebook’s changing algorithms in ways that prioritize friend activity over brands.

Via, the app-based ride-sharing service, is replacing bus services for an entire town in Texas, according to CBS This Morning. It’s the latest evidence of US cities forgoing investments in public transportation in favor of partnerships with privately held technology startups.

Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer have responded to accusations of verbal abuse from a former crew member. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the Duffer brothers said they were “deeply upset to learn someone felt uncomfortable on our set.”

Huawei announced at CES this year that it would be bringing its Honor 7X and Honor View 10 phones to the US. Now we know when to expect the View 10: March 23rd, with preorders opening today for $499.

Season 1 of Netflix’s street-level superhero show Jessica Jones had one primary villain: Kilgrave, a mind-controlling monster whose ugly history with the heroine drove most of the action. But season 1 had another, more complicated villain: Jeri Hogarth is a high-powered attorney played by Carrie-Anne Moss, best known as Trinity from the Matrix movies and the duplicitous Natalie from Christopher Nolan’s Memento. In the original Marvel comics, her character was a fairly bland and reliable older man... Читать дальше...

Amazon now lets you use Alexa to place phone and video calls and send messages on tablets, so you no longer need an Echo to talk to other Alexa users. Compatible tablets include Android tablets, iPads, and Amazon’s Fire tablets, as spotted by Engadget.

The University of Arizona is tracking freshman students’ ID card swipes to anticipate which students are more likely to drop out. University researchers hope to use the data to lower dropout rates. (Dropping out refers to those who have left higher-education entirely and those who transfer to other colleges.)

The AliveCor KardiaBand, a sensor compatible with the Apple Watch, can detect dangerous levels of potassium in blood with 94 percent accuracy. Though the US Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved KardiaBand for this purpose, it’s an interesting step forward considering that, right now, the condition is usually caught using invasive blood tests that use needles.

At SXSW 2018, I was invited to take part in a four-day immersive story experience called a SimuLife. Mounted by the Austin-based creative lab Interactive Deep Dive, SimuLife is meant to blur the line between fantasy and reality by letting me interact with the story as part of daily life. It’s like David Fincher’s movie The Game, executed in the real world. Other than those broad edicts, I wasn’t given any advance information about the experience. I’m documenting my journey through the story — wherever it leads. Читать дальше...

Philips has announced that it’s bringing the Brilliance 492P8 curved 49-inch monitor to the United States in Q4 2018 — with an upgraded QHD display. It’s not the first 49-inch curved computer monitor (that honor goes to the Samsung CHG90, released last year), but with a 5120 x 1440 display, it’s the highest resolution we’ve seen in a 32:9 form factor yet.

Samsung is apparently no longer looking at using an in-display fingerprint sensor for the Galaxy Note 9, according to a research note from KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, via AppleInsider.

Augmented reality is almost exclusively associated with vision, but it doesn’t have to be. Audio company Bose announced a project it’s calling “Bose AR” at this year’s SXSW festival, and it showed off a pair of prototype glasses that demonstrate what sound-based AR might look and feel like. The company plans to ship 10,000 of these glasses to developers and manufacturers this summer, with the intent of developing its own line of commercial glasses and partnering with other eyewear companies.

LG has begun rolling out Android Oreo to users with V30 devices on Verizon’s network, as spotted by AndroidPolice. A user posted screenshots of the software update on their V30, which seems to include a few changes to the notifications window and a new settings app. The software update is 1.7 GB. Users on a forum where the screenshots were posted said they expected some AI camera features as some Korean customers have reported, though there doesn’t seem to be anything in the US version so far.