Новости за 11.04.2018

T-Mobile has announced that through an update today, it is now supporting Apple’s Business Chat. Included in iOS 11.3, Business Chat is a way for customers to chat with company reps over iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. That means instead of calling, emailing, or hitting up Twitter DMs and Facebook Messenger when you have a question, you can talk to an actual human being at a company directly through the iMessage app.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has found himself once again embroiled in a controversy surrounding his website’s policy on moderation. In a Reddit thread announcing the platform’s 2017 transparency report findings, in which Reddit identified and listed close to 1,000 suspected Russia-linked propaganda accounts that have been banned, Huffman replied to a straightforward question about the company’s rules around hate speech, which is a verbal attack based on race, religion, or another protected class.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his second of two appearances before Congress on Wednesday, enduring a five-hour session of questions from members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In contrast to their amiably confused counterparts in the Senate, members of the House committee demonstrated a generally better command of how Facebook works and how its efforts to develop richly detailed advertising profiles for billions of people have created privacy concerns around the world.

Bellus3D, the company behind the uncannily accurate, slightly creepy 3D selfie camera, is making the jump to the iPhone with a new app that will let you take its oddly realistic scans without any extra hardware.

Called before Congress this week, Mark Zuckerberg tried to present Facebook’s approach to user data as open and transparent. In question after question, he focused on the privacy choices available to users, and their ownership over all the data they share — and it wasn’t all wrong. Facebook has data because users share it (mostly). Users control that data and can review it or delete it whenever they want (with a few exceptions). And if you delete your account, (almost) all of that data will disappear from Facebook’s servers within 90 days. Читать дальше...

Do you really miss your Walkman headphones? Or maybe you just want to pull off the perfect Guardians of the Galaxy cosplay? Either way, JLab’s Rewind headphones might be the solution for you, styled after the old-school, bright orange on-ear headphones that the original Walkman made famous. They look more or less like the original Sony headphones, but with an added dose of modern day Bluetooth technology that lets them cut the cord and a microphone for answering calls.

Instagram is building its own data portability tool which will allow users to download a copy of everything they’ve ever shared on the platform, similar to how Facebook’s download your information tool works. The platform confirmed the news to TechCrunch.

Battle royale shooter Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is quite popular in China, with the country making up nearly half of the game’s tens of millions of users. But with that popularity comes a significant amount of in-game cheating, with around 99 percent of all unauthorized modifications originating from Chinese players. Cheating is so prevalent, in fact, that Dell even went so far as to advertise a new laptop for the Chinese market as being superior for running PUBG-specific plugins, with plugin being a euphemism for a cheat or hack. Читать дальше...

Well that was intense. On Monday, April 9th, Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy held a Reddit AMA where they announced that they were planning to post a video spoiling the entirety of the upcoming second season of Westworld. Nolan put it like this:

Netflix has decided to exit France’s Cannes Film Festival entirely over festival leadership’s decision to ban films from competing unless they secure a local theatrical release, according to a report from Variety. The report includes an interview with Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, who says the decision was made only after escalating tensions between the streaming service and Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux. Netflix, though it was banned from competition, was told it could... Читать дальше...

Ford showed the next generation of its compact Focus Tuesday. While that may not normally sound momentous, it’s a reminder that the automaker is still focused on cars and not trucks, SUVs, and connecting cities. But it’s also another indicator of how Ford will connect its cars in the coming years.

In 2017, District 9 and Chappie writer-director Neill Blomkamp launched Oats Studios, a production house designed to experiment with new ways of developing projects ranging from short CGI films to longer story concepts that could eventually become feature-length projects. Now he’s announced his plans to turn one of those shorter films, Firebase, into a much larger project — and he wants fans to fund it.

For the first time, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved an artificial intelligence diagnostic device that doesn’t need a specialized doctor to interpret the results. The software program, called IDx-DR, can detect a form of eye disease by looking at photos of the retina.

GIF platform Tenor has announced that it will be powering GIF searches within LinkedIn Messaging, as reported by TechCrunch. The news comes just a couple weeks after Google announced it had acquired Tenor to help the company bring up GIFs inside Google images and other services like Gboard more easily.

Apple Music has broken the 40 million subscriber mark, according to Variety, and picked up a new boss in Oliver Schusser, who’ll be running the streaming service as part of his new role as vice president of Apple Music & International Content.

Mark Zuckerberg is facing a lot of questions about Facebook’s policies, most of which involve handling user data. But there’s a running theme on the Republican side of the aisle: Facebook is censoring conservative content, particularly two pro-Trump vloggers who go by the names Diamond and Silk. Multiple legislators have asked about Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway and Rochelle “Silk” Richardson, who complained that Facebook was limiting the reach of their videos, and were told their videos were “unsafe... Читать дальше...

When J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973, he left behind mountains of notes, poetry, and stories set within his larger Middle-earth fantasy world that he never got around to finishing. Since then, Tolkien’s son Christopher has worked to edit and collect his father’s writings, which became posthumous books, like The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, that built and expanded the world that we see in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. More recently, we’ve been seeing more standalone novels based on those manuscripts... Читать дальше...

Sex workers are running out of safe online spaces. Craigslist is no longer displaying personal ads. The controversial classifieds site Backpage, which many escorts used to screen clients, has been seized by the FBI. Adult content is disappearing off Google Drive, and many sex workers say they’re being forced off social media. With the news that President Trump has signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), their options will continue to dwindle — and with it... Читать дальше...

For families looking for cheap budget phones for their kids, there are now phones around the $100 range that can almost pass for flagship phones from a distance. The Blu Vivo XL3 now costs $109.99 for 24 hours on Amazon. Blu is also launching an additional Blu Vivo XL3 Plus phone.

In today’s hearing before the House Committee on Commerce and Energy, Mark Zuckerberg stated that the changes Facebook is making in response to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be available worldwide. Zuckerberg made a commitment to not only provide the same privacy controls but making the same kinds of disclosures and treating users’ data the same. The GDPR imposes requirements on how user data is collected, and how user data must be deleted at the user’s request. Читать дальше...

President Donald Trump has signed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), a bill that aims to fight sex trafficking by reducing legal protections for online platforms. FOSTA passed the Senate in March by an overwhelming majority, and it’s been endorsed by the Internet Association, which represents major companies like Facebook and Google. But privacy and civil liberties advocates say it’s a fatally flawed bill that would hurt small online communities, and sex... Читать дальше...

Google is planning to launch a new design for its Gmail web interface soon. In an email to G Suite administrators, obtained by The Verge, the company says the new design will include “several new features” that will also be made available to regular Gmail accounts. Google promises a “fresh, clean look for Gmail on the web,” with features like Smart Reply, the ability to snooze emails, and offline support.

For weeks, Facebook has been struggling with the fallout from a third-party app that leaked 87 million Facebook profiles to the campaign firm Cambridge Analytica — but speaking to a House committee today, Zuckerberg revealed a new personal connection to the breach. Apparently, Zuckerberg himself was one of the many Facebook profiles collected through the app.

Sony announced its Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact at Mobile World Congress this year and has now followed up with pricing and availability news. In the US, both models will be available to pre-order online through Best Buy from April 13th through April 19th. They’ll then be available online through Best Buy on April 20th and will come to the company’s physical stores on May 6th. Then, on May 20th, they’ll come to Amazon and “other participating retailers.” The Xperia XZ2 Compact starts at $649.99... Читать дальше...

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