Новости за 11.04.2018

If reports that a combination of sarin and chlorine gases killed more than 40 people in Douma, Syria are true, many of the survivors should expect to recover physically. The chemical weapons themselves won’t linger in the town, but for some people, the fear and anxiety left behind by a chemical attack will.

Isaac Asimov’s acclaimed science fiction Foundation trilogy might finally reach television. Deadline reports that Apple is putting an adaptation into development, adding to the company’s growing list of original content offerings as it seeks to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon, and Disney.

Spotify is planning to make changes to its free subscription tier that should make it more closely mimic its paid subscription service, according to Bloomberg.

https://live.theverge.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-congress-testimony-live-blog-stream/

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Spam calls are universally terrible, and Google is taking steps to help you ignore them by automatically sending spam calls to voicemail instead of letting them ring, as spotted via 9to5Google.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce today, fresh off the heels of a grueling five-hour joint session before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees yesterday. In total, Zuckerberg will face questions from nearly 100 legislators, and many of those legislators have received thousands of dollars from the company Zuckerberg runs.

Spotify and Hulu are today expanding their partnership and offering a bundle of both services to all consumers for $12.99 per month. That price gets you Spotify Premium and traditional, video-on-demand Hulu (with ads). Initially, this deal is only available to current Spotify Premium customers. The companies say everyone will be able to sign up for it sometime this summer.

The iconic moment from Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing yesterday came before he faced toothless questions from profoundly uninformed senators. It happened when the Facebook boss walked to his seat and was confronted by a wall of wide-angle camera lenses and photographers jostling for position, each of them trying to capture the most distilled picture of a CEO under fire. Zuckerberg’s personal space was eroded by the heaving throng, and he was treated less as a human and more as an object of fascination. Читать дальше...

Slack is a web app. Trello is a web app. Google Docs. Gmail. Even Twitter.

Qualcomm is introducing a new line of chips today that are custom-made for smart cameras. The new line is called the Vision Intelligence Platform, and it’s meant to get AI features, extreme low-light image processing, image stabilization, and computer vision abilities into more cameras — and to do it better than a repurposed smartphone chip could.

HP has been ramping up its Omen line over the past couple years to serve the high-end gaming community, and now it’s taking a swing at more casual gamers with its new Pavilion Gaming line. At launch, the line includes two desktops, a laptop, and a display, and HP says that it’s all meant for people who are interested in gaming, but aren’t necessarily buying their PC solely to play games.

It’s very red, and this time Apple got the front right

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Artificial intelligence is being used for a dizzying array of tasks, but one of the most successful is also one of the scariest: automated surveillance. Case in point is Chinese startup SenseTime, which makes AI-powered surveillance software for the country’s police, and which this week received a new round of funding worth $600 million. This funding, led by retailing giant Alibaba, reportedly gives SenseTime a total valuation of more than $4.5 billion, making it the most valuable AI startup in the world... Читать дальше...

After yesterday’s seemingly endless marathon hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, today Mark Zuckerberg heads to the House, where he’ll be answering questions in front of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The existence of at least one new pair of wearable Spectacle glasses for Snapchat has just been confirmed by the FCC’s radiation chambers. The documents published today, and first spotted by Variety, describe a “wearable video camera” made by Snap Inc. with “Spectacles” branding and “Model 002” printed on the packing label. Although most of the documents accompanying the filing are obscured under a confidentiality request, a little digging reveals support for 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 (BLE). Читать дальше...

Popular streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins once again streamed Epic Games’ Fortnite with Drake on his personal Twitch channel this evening. The stream, which had more than 230,000 active viewers at one point, marks the second time the duo have paired up in the battle royale shooter, following a landmark stream last month with NFL player JuJu Smith-Schuster and rapper Travis Scott that broke the record for the most-viewed live stream on Twitch.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress today in a marathon five-hour session about the ongoing Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal. In addition to discussing that situation, and how as many as 87 million users had their information misused by the data mining firm, the conversation also touched on Facebook’s role and responsibility in the world as a news source and a massively influential tool for democracy and communication.

Mark Zuckerberg made his highly anticipated debut before Congress today during a marathon five-hour hearing before a joint session of the Commerce and Judiciary committees. Zuckerberg remained calm and level-headed throughout, and senators were mostly polite and deferential as they sought to understand how Facebook had inadvertently allowed the profiles of up to 87 million people to be collected by the political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.

Apple has been ordered by a federal court in Texas today to pay $502.6 million to a patent troll called VirnetX, the latest turn in an eight-year-old legal battle over FaceTime and iMessage patents, according to Bloomberg.

Microsoft is bringing 19 new original Xbox games to the Xbox One this month, including six classic Star Wars titles. The additions bring the total number of original Xbox backwards compatibility games to 32, after Microsoft launched 13 titles last year. All of the games will work via either a disc version of the title or a digital copy from the Microsoft Store. This is the full list of games that will be available later this month:

Suspicions that Facebook (and associated apps like Instagram) are secretly recording audio through phone microphones in order to better target ads have refused to die, despite official denials dating all the way back to 2016. In today’s Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the urban legend yet again, issuing an absolute denial.

The Federal Trade Commission warned six companies today that their warranty policies could be in violation of the law. Although we don’t know the identities of these companies, the FTC does note that they’re “major companies” that sell cars, cellphones, and video game systems. The companies currently claim their warranties are void if owners use them with unauthorized parts or services or if consumers open them up by removing a seal.

As part of his hours-long Senate testimony today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to assure lawmakers that he didn’t fire Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey for his political views. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked Zuckerberg about 2016 reports that the company had removed conservative political news from its trending stories box, and followed up with questions about its moderators’ political views. When Zuckerberg said he didn’t ask employees for their political views, Cruz followed up with “Why was... Читать дальше...

Google’s original Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, the beginning of the company’s broader push to unify and streamline its in-house hardware efforts, have been removed from the online Google Store, as noted today by AndroidPolice. Google confirmed to The Verge that the devices are no longer available for purchase from the company directly. You can, however, still purchase the original Pixel and Pixel XL devices in a variety of colors and storage sizes from places like Amazon and Best Buy.

Google’s original Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, the beginning of the company’s broader push to unify and streamline its in-house hardware efforts, have been removed from the Play Store, as noted today by AndroidPolice. Google confirmed to The Verge that the devices are no longer available for purchase from the company directly. You can, however, still purchase the original Pixel and Pixel XL devices in a variety of colors and storage sizes from places like Amazon and Best Buy.