Новости за 30.04.2018

FCC filings submitted by Sonos in March suggest that the company is working on a new speaker, potentially a follow-up to the Playbar. The filings, which were first spotted by Variety, reference model number S14. The device will reportedly incorporate an HDMI port, which would be new for the Playbar. (It previously relied on an optical in port.) The label filing, which you can see below, depicts a microphone. This probably means the mysterious speaker will ship with support for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant... Читать дальше...

Logan Paul announced in a 16-minute vlog over the weekend that he is ending regular updates on his popular daily vlogging channel, which launched less than two years ago and currently has over 17 million subscribers.

Summer movie season kicked off early this year with the release of Avengers: Infinity War, but in spite of its history-making performance at the box office, audiences no doubt have an appetite for things other than Marvel superheroes. Fortunately, May will bring a lot of new alternative options to television screens.

One of the big issues T-Mobile will have to fight back against if it wants to successfully merge with Sprint is market consolidation. If the two companies merge, the US will go from four major wireless service providers to three, therefore reducing competition. Given how aggressive (and successful) T-Mobile has been over the last several years — ever since its proposed merger with AT&T failed — you can see why this might be an issue.

Oculus VR is developing an immersive theater experience to debut next year that will feature real-world actors who perform in virtual reality using motion capture. The experience is being billed as indie game Journey meets interactive theater show Sleep No More, according to Yelena Rachitsky, an executive producer of experiences at Oculus who detailed the project in an interview with CNET.

After two earlier attempts failed to materialize, T-Mobile and Sprint announced on Sunday that they’ve reached a $26.5 billion merger agreement. If approved, it would combine the third and fourth largest carriers in the United States. The new business would instantly become a much more formidable rival to Verizon and AT&T. Both companies claim that a successful merger would make the United States a leader in the formative early years of 5G mobile networks. But there are very legitimate concerns... Читать дальше...

Trump still hasn’t appointed a science adviser — but he did offer the job to Bill Gates, who said it was “not a good use of my time.”

LG’s next flagship smartphone, the G7 ThinQ, is debuting in just a couple days, and another teaser has been dropped. Speaking with Engadget, LG says that the phone will have a Boombox Speaker that “increases the base sound level by more than 6dB with twice the amount of bass.”

After years of back and forth, Sprint and T-Mobile have finally announced plans to merge. And while there’s plenty of steps that the two companies will have to go through to convince regulators they should be allowed to merge, if you ask T-Mobile and Sprint, the main reason is that the two companies together will be better equipped to roll a next-generation 5G network.

Chinese authorities are able to retrieve deleted WeChat messages from a suspect’s phone to catch criminals, a government watchdog admitted on Monday in social media posts spotted by South China Morning Post. The stunning admission confirms what many have believed for years: WeChat can be used as a government surveillance tool, and even once-deleted messages can be retrieved by authorities.

Adi Shankar has an idea to help The Simpsons deal with the criticism surrounding Apu. The Castlevania producer just launched a screenwriting competition that asks competitors to write a new Simpsons episode centered around Apu in a way that “subverts him, pivots him, intelligently writes him out, or evolves him in a way that takes a mean spirited mockery and transforms him into a kernel of truth wrapped in funny insight aka actual satire.”

The first person has been charged and found guilty under Malaysia’s Anti-Fake News Act, less than a month after it was passed into law, as reported by Gizmodo.

Is it better to have one or two spaces after a period? The first study investigating this hotly contested issue is here, and it supposedly gives the win to the two-spacers. But a closer look at the research suggests that the only reasonable interpretation is that double spacing after a period remains bad. It’s ugly, it doesn’t help when it comes to what matters most (reading comprehension), and the experiment that supports its benefits uses an outdated font style.

The hyperloop seems like one of those things that’s always just “three years away.” Last year, the head honchos at Hyperloop One told The Verge they expect to see “working hyperloops around the world... by 2020.” Now here comes Richard Branson, chairman of the recently rebranded Virgin Hyperloop One, to push that deadline to 2021, the year he believes the hyperloop will be ready for human passengers.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 April 2018 Update is available today and ready to download. After months of testing, Microsoft is making its latest Windows 10 update available for anyone to install today. Like previous updates, Microsoft is rolling it out in stages and you’ll have to manually update today to get it early, or wait until it’s more broadly available on Windows Update on May 9th.

This weekend’s announcement of a proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint has been years in the making. In 2014, the companies bailed on a deal after concerns that Obama-era antitrust regulators would intervene, as the Federal Communications Commission also expressed skepticism of huge mergers. But the two telecoms seem to think that, despite some aborted attempts, their time has finally come.

Twitter is giving more prominence to links tweeted by your network, and it’s starting to group tweets that mention a link together on your timeline. The feature has come to iOS and Android devices as well as Twitter’s web platform, the company confirmed to BuzzFeed.

Samsung announced today that it’s releasing both 128GB and 256GB versions of its Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus in the US this month. Preorders open May 1st on Samsung.com with the devices actually coming out on May 18th. (They’ll only be for sale through the company’s website.) The new storage options will be available in all three of the phones’ color choices: purple, blue, and black.

Etsy, Tumblr, Postmates, and Foursquare will be among thousands of other websites expected to post “red alerts” on May 9th ahead of a vote to block the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules. The “go red” campaign is being run by BattleForTheNet.com, and it’s designed to promote awareness about the vote and plaster websites in alerts highlighting the Senate vote. The hope is that this will spur constituents to flood lawmakers with phone calls and emails calling for the restoration of open internet protections. Читать дальше...

When the Turkish government suddenly banned Wikipedia in late April last year, it came as little surprise to many people in the country. Access to platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp have been periodically restricted in Turkey numerous times since 2014, particularly after tumultuous events like mass demonstrations, suicide bomb attacks, or the failed coup attempt in July 2016. What’s strange is that the ban stayed. As of this Sunday, Wikipedia has been blocked in the country for a full year. Читать дальше...

For the first time since advocating for the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein, the Time’s Up collective has singled out an alleged abuser: R&B star Robert Kelly. Women of Color of Time’s Up, a subcommittee of the larger group specifically organizing around issues that affect women and girls of color, released a statement this morning announcing their support of #MuteRKelly, an online campaign asking Live Nation and Sony Music to cancel R. Kelly’s tour dates and drop his recording contract. Women of Color of Time’s Up... Читать дальше...

Amazon still sells plenty of counterfeit goods even though it’s tried to crack down on fake sellers for years, according to The Guardian. By ordering goods that were listed as legitimate on Amazon, the report uncovered a number of fake items sold by third-party sellers, including a pair of knockoff AirPods that were supposed to be from Apple, used iPhone chargers that were sold as new, counterfeit Kylie Jenner lip gloss, and a fake Supreme x Louis Vuitton iPhone case.

On March 12th, France.com suddenly went offline. For 24 years, it had been a tourist and travel booking site, but now it was redirecting to the English version of the government’s official site at France.fr. No one was more surprised than Jean-Noel Frydman, the previous owner of the domain and trademark holder for France.com. Overnight, his website had disappeared, and all associated email addresses were suddenly bouncing back. In a matter of minutes, a unique and lucrative asset had gone up in smoke. Читать дальше...

Facebook is making fake news posts in the News Feed harder to see by shrinking the size of the links to content that has been verified by third-party fact-checkers as inaccurate, according to a report by TechCrunch. “We reduce the visual prominence of feed stories that are fact-checked false,” a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to the news site.

Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth, the design duo behind the republished MTA, NASA, and EPA standards manuals, are back with a new book: Emoji, a collection of the original 176 emoji characters.