Новости за 23.03.2018

Today, Trump signed into law a massive $1.3 trillion spending bill that will fund the federal government through the rest of fiscal year 2018, and the deal is quite generous to NASA. Practically all of NASA’s programs get a funding boost, and the space agency even gets money that it didn’t ask for — notably, the funds needed to build a second launch platform for its next big rocket.

Cloud storage and collaboration company Dropbox — which started 10 years ago as a small startup in the San Francisco-based Y Combinator incubator program — went public today, and its shares were up nearly 36 percent as of market close this afternoon. The successful performance makes Dropbox the biggest tech IPO since Snapchat’s in March 2017. Dropbox ended the day of trading, under the ticker symbol “DBX,” with a market valuation of around $10 billion.

We’re still far away from the 2019 opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the twin expansion lands that will be opening at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, but the narrative groundwork for the new parks is already being quietly set up. Specifically, the new novel Thrawn: Alliances from Timothy Zahn will send Darth Vader and the Grand Admiral together on a mission to Batuu, which io9 notes is the same planet that will serve as the setting for Galaxy’s Edge.

Chinese search giant Baidu has received approval to begin testing its self-driving cars in Beijing, Reuters reports. It is a sign of China’s strong support for the industry in the wake of the first pedestrian death from an autonomous Uber vehicle in the US.

China’s media regulator has cracked down on online video spoofs and parodies, according to state-run media outlet Xinhua.

Steven Soderbergh’s new movie Unsane fits into a long line of “Who’s the crazy one here?” stories. Films like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing, and modern equivalents like Flightplan and The Forgotten all hinge on protagonists being told they’re deluded, and that someone they clearly remember never actually existed. Unsane plays a similar game, with The Crown’s Claire Foy as a fragile, angry woman convinced that her stalker has somehow infiltrated the psychiatric ward where she’s been committed. Читать дальше...

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the Federal Communications Commission is contemplating a new rule that would prevent small and rural mobile providers from receiving federal subsidies if they utilize electronics from Chinese manufacturers including Huawei and ZTE. It’s possible the rule will be proposed as soon as Monday, according to the Journal, but it could also be postponed or shelved. If the FCC moves forward and unveils the rule, it would be the latest measure used... Читать дальше...

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene told a crowd on the final day of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco that he’s happy that Epic Games’ Fortnite is expanding the genre he was instrumental in helping pioneer. “It’s great that the battle royale space is expanding and Fortnite is getting battle royale game mode in the hands of a lot more people,” Greene said.

We’ve been wondering what, if anything, Apple will do to make its forthcoming low-cost iPad stand out (aside from the price). And now we might have an answer: it could support the Pencil stylus. As of now, only iPad Pro models support it.

Cambridge Analytica’s acting CEO said in a statement today that the company will undergo an independent third-party audit to determine whether it still holds any data covertly obtained from Facebook users.

In a meeting room on the second floor of the newly renovated Moscone South exhibition complex, a wide-ranging and diverse group of game developers came together on Wednesday to voice interest in unionizing their industry. The discussion was billed as a roundtable event to be held during the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco. It was coordinated by the International Game Developers Association (IDGA), a nonprofit membership group that formed in the ‘90s amid conversations about violence in video games... Читать дальше...

HBO’s Silicon Valley is a show that’s largely about how hot tech trends are either dumb or actively harmful. And its last season included a prominent subplot about Keenan Feldspar, a Palmer Luckey stand-in whose much-hyped virtual reality technology literally blows up in its users’ faces. The technology is barely functional, but it entrances users so much that it gets a massive buyout from Silicon Valley megacorp Hooli. “I spent $2 billion on a piece-of-shit VR gadget that’s never gonna work,” complains Hooli’s CEO. Читать дальше...

The US Department of Transportation is currently evaluating a series of requests from airlines sent in December that would hide fees from consumers, as reported by Bloomberg. Airlines are asking the DOT to repeal rules that mandate “full-fare advertising,” and they’d also like to hide on-time flight and cancellation info while customers are buying tickets.

During a tweetstorm, Elon Musk has removed both of his companies’ Facebook pages after being challenged to do so by a few of his followers. The pages of both SpaceX and Tesla are now inactive. Each had around 2.6 million followers.

Facebook has been sued four times in Northern California federal courts this week in response to the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal, SFGate reports. The London-based data analytics firm misused data from as many as 50 million users, as reports from The Guardian and The New York Times revealed last weekend.

Sonos today announced that it will remove advertising for its speakers across Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, and Twitter for a week — yes, just one week — beginning on Monday. “We are concerned by the recent revelations about Facebook and the exploitation of its platform,” the company said in a blog post. In addition to hitting pause on its advertising, Sonos says its Facebook and Instagram accounts will go dark next week as well.

Earlier this month, news broke that Spotify was cracking down on users running modded versions of the Spotify app to stream music for free while blocking ads. At the time, it sounded like it was only a few users, but it turns out, the number is a bit higher. Spotify’s IPO filing noted that roughly 2 million users are getting around ads on Spotify without paying, as noted by Reuters.

A rhythm game where you fist-bump and high-five a partner. A battle of wits played out with tiny robots. A puppet theater where the puppets are also controllers. These are a few of the projects at this year’s Alt.Ctrl.GDC, an annual showcase at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Alt.Ctrl.GDC features games with “alternative controllers” — from the simple, like a spray bottle or slappable rubber zombie head, to the elaborate, like a small tent where players role-play a unicorn with an office job. Читать дальше...

The Justice Department today charged nine Iranians with a massive hacking campaign targeting, among others, 320 universities in 22 countries. According to prosecutors, the campaign was part of a state-sponsored attempt to steal information on science and technology that reached 144 American universities.

Apple published a new ad for its iPhone X last week, demonstrating the new Face ID unlock feature. It also demonstrated an iOS 11 bug, where the text from an iMessage escapes the animated bubble it’s supposed to stay inside. While it was a relatively minor issue, Apple has decided to update its ad on YouTube (somehow, without having to republish it) to remove the iOS 11 bug by re-shooting the scene it appears in. It’s not clear if this means the company now plans to fix the bug in its upcoming iOS 11.3 update... Читать дальше...

Apple is reportedly working on a foldable iPhone to be released within two years, a Wall Street firm said today. Bank of America Merrill Lynch says Apple is working with Asian partners to make a whole new iPhone design, as reported by CNBC.

Every spring, Apple hosts a keynote to unveil a slew of new products and software updates — but this year it’s taking “a field trip” from California to host press and developers at a high school in Chicago for an education-focused event. Catch all the latest news out of Windy City right here.

Some Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus phones are experiencing problems with unresponsive touchscreens, according to various reports from across forums like Reddit and XDA, as spotted by Android Police. Users with the issue are apparently seeing different dead zones across S9 screens. Some people are finding that the top part of the display doesn’t respond to touch inputs, while others are saying that the bottom of the screen no longer works.

The picture at the top of this post is not the AirPower wireless charger that Apple announced at its iPhone X event last September. It comes from the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for a device called Plux, which has raised over $365,000 at the time of posting from over 9,000 backers. All of these potential customers seem very eager to get their hands on anything that even somewhat resembles the promise of Apple’s AirPower mat.

The South Korean government will launch a new initiative to stop the “culture of working overtime” by shutting down computers at 8PM on Fridays so workers can go home when they’re supposed to, reports the BBC.