Новости за 03.04.2018

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two founders of a fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) that raised more than $32 million from thousands of investors last year. It was also endorsed by professional boxer Floyd Mayweather and producer DJ Khaled. The SEC alleges that the two co-founders of Centra, Sohrab “Sam” Sharma and Robert Farkas, offered and sold fraudulent and unregistered investments via a digital token called CTR.

We know that Apple didn't change much feature- or looks-wise on its newest iPad, but it turns out, not much has changed on the inside, either. iFixit published its teardown of the new device this morning, and the inside looks almost identical to the inside of last year’s iPad. iFixit notes that it’s even pretty similar to the first-generation iPad Air from 2013.

Mozilla has announced a new version of its Firefox browser for standalone virtual and augmented reality headsets. It’s called Firefox Reality, and Mozilla describes it as a cross-platform, open source, and privacy-friendly browser whose interface will be specialized for headsets. You can see an early demo of it working on the HTC Vive Focus, but it’s not available publicly yet, and Mozilla hasn’t specified which headsets will support it.

Snapchat is introducing several new features this week, including the ability to make group video calls and a “Mentions” feature that allows users to tag friends in snaps uploaded onto Stories. Mentions were first rumored last month.

Facebook released a small update to Messenger this morning that makes the app a bit better for sharing photos and videos. Most notably, it’s adding support for 720p video. Unfortunately, this can’t be captured right from within the app — for some reason, it seems the in-app camera will remain lower resolution — but you’ll be able to share higher-resolution footage as long as it’s been captured in advance, either from your camera roll or the News Feed.

If there’s a single theme that dominates Ezra Klein’s fascinating interview with Mark Zuckerberg, it's accountability. In the 18 months since the 2016 election, the world has belatedly come to grips with the unintended consequences of social media, and yet, it’s only beginning to ask who should be held accountable — and how they should be held accountable — when the worst happens.

A report from Bloomberg this week has made public something that should already have been apparent to tech industry observers: Apple is planning to replace Intel processors in Mac computers with its own chips starting sometime around 2020. The two California companies have enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership ever since Apple made the switch to Intel CPUs with the 2006 MacBook Pro and iMac, but recent trends have made the breakup between them inevitable. Intel’s chip improvements have stagnated... Читать дальше...

Apple’s bare minimum still beats everybody else

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Fewer jobs are at risk of automation from AI and robotics than previous forecasts have warned, according to a report from the OECD, an inter-governmental group of high-income countries.

Intel unveiled its first Core i9 chip for laptops earlier today, and updated Core i5 and i7 processors that include 6 cores of power instead of the usual quad-core processors. All of these new processors are primarily designed for gaming and high-performance laptops, so expect to see a number of new notebooks shipping with these new processors. While processors don’t matter as much to gaming (outside of VR) as a modern GPU, a number of OEMs are announcing new laptops today that pair Intel’s latest processor with Nvidia graphics cards. Читать дальше...

Oppo Digital, the 14-year-old US brand known for its high-end audio equipment and disc players, says it has begun winding down its business. From April 2nd, Oppo Digital says it will “gradually” stop making products like the PM3 headphones, and DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD disc players. Oppo Digital is a separate company from Oppo the phone maker which is unaffected by today’s announcement.

Programmer Jeff Dean was one of Google’s earliest employees, and is credited with helping to create some of the fundamental technologies that powered the tech giant’s rise in the early 2000s. Now he’s been put in charge of Google’s future — taking over as head of the company’s artificial intelligence unit.

Dragon Quest, arguably the most popular video game series of all time in Japan, is getting its first VR entry. Dragon Quest VR is coming to Bandai Namco’s VR Zone in Shinjuku, Tokyo, later this month — the same location that plays host to the stunning VR version of Mario Kart.

Ever since Intel announced its first Core i9 processor for desktops last year, it’s only been a matter of time until the company brought that branding to laptops, too. Today, Intel is announcing its first Core i9 chip for laptops, with what it claims is “the best gaming and creation laptop processor Intel has ever built.”

Xiaomi has uploaded an English-subtitled video demonstrating Xiao AI, a voice assistant built specifically for Xiaomi phones. As you’ll see, it’s pretty similar in scope to the likes of Siri and Google Assistant, but is clearly tailored for the Chinese market with hooks into WeChat and so on.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates clockmaker John Harrison, whose efforts to calculate longitude helped people figure out their place in the world — literally.

Instagram no longer has an Apple Watch app. The Verge can confirm that the version 39.0 update to the iPhone client, which comes with a changelog simply stating “general bug fixes and performance improvements,” removes the Watch app altogether.

Reddit has redesigned its website and the changes begin rolling out today, marking the first time in a decade that the social media network has altered its interface. One percent of users will see the new design today, and over the course of the next few months, the design will come to all Reddit users and lurkers, as Wired reports. As of now, those who see the change can still switch back to the old Reddit.

Snapchat aired its first-ever TV ad this past weekend during the NCAA’s Final Four, and it appears to have set its sights on a new audience: your parents. The ad bills Snapchat as “a camera, where how you feel matters more than how you look,” while painting it as an easy way to take photos of messy babies and put dog ears on grandma.

Valve has gone ahead and quietly hidden a link to its Steam Machines webpage from the Steam store itself, a move indicative of the ill-fated project to push a console-like transition for gaming PCs in the living room. The move, noticed by PC Gamer today, doesn’t mean Steam Machines can no longer be purchased. You can still find the live link here, and you can even purchase the recommended Alienware Alpha Steam Machine from Dell if so choose, as well as the Valve-designed SteamOS controller over on Amazon. Читать дальше...

The dating app Grindr has been sharing data on whether its users have HIV with two outside companies, according to BuzzFeed and the Norwegian research nonprofit SINTEF.

Samsung’s latest additions to its line of laptops include the new Notebook 3 and Notebook 5, cheaper variants of the existing Notebook 7 Spin and Notebook 9 models. The company hasn’t released pricing for the devices yet. However, we can expect them to come in under the $1,199.99 Notebook 9, the updated version of which launched last month, and likely lower in price than the recently updated 2-in-1 Notebook 7 Spin, which comes out later this year.

If you’re seeing a 500 internal server error while visiting YouTube today, you’re not alone. The company confirmed via Twitter at 3:27PM ET that channel pages were down, though individual videos could still be watched.

If you’re seeing a 500 internal server error while visiting YouTube today, you’re not alone. The company confirmed via Twitter at 2:27PM ET that channel pages were down, though individual videos could still be watched.

The Environmental Protection Agency is calling for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions standards for model year 2022-2025 cars and light trucks. The agency said today that the standards — which were put in place by the Obama administration in 2012 — are “not appropriate and should be revised.” The move brings to bear a fight that has been brewing since the earliest days of the Trump administration, when the president called the regulations “out of control” at a meeting with executives of the big three automakers. Читать дальше...