Новости за 17.05.2018

Drive.ai, a self-driving startup based in California, is operating fully driverless vehicles without safety drivers on public roads in Frisco, a suburb outside Dallas-Forth Worth, the company announced this week. The tests are in the run-up to the company’s planned autonomous ride-hailing service, which is scheduled to launch later this summer. It’s a major milestone for the scrappy startup, which can now claim the distinction of being only the second company to experiment with driverless vehicles on public roads in the US. Читать дальше...

The CX Sport are Sennheiser’s latest wireless headphones, joining the CX 6.00BT and HD1 Free (which I just compared earlier this week), but designed for more athletic activities.

Catfish host and executive producer Nev Schulman is currently being investigated for sexual misconduct. The Daily Beast reports that MTV has temporarily halted production on the show. “We’re working with Critical Content, our third party production company, to conduct a thorough investigation,” a spokesperson told the publication.

Lego announced a new connected toy line today, called Powered Up, as well as its first set in the series: an app-controlled Batmobile. The company previously ventured into connected toys, most recently with its Boost set that lets kids build a variety of items and then code and control them through an app. Remember the cat that plays the harmonica? Loved it.

Before today you could ask Google Home (and in turn, Google Assistant) to play shows on streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, but not with Google’s own Play Movies service.

Amazon has picked up The Hunt, a new series from Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. The 10-episode series will follow a group of Nazi hunters in 1977’s New York City.

After announcing the game back in March, today Activision has finally provided a glimpse at the next Call of Duty. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (unfortunately styled as IIII) will ditch the series’ traditional single-player campaign, and instead focus on multiplayer (there will still be narrative elements, but they will be weaved into the multiplayer modes).

Google is changing the visual cues for HTTPS in Chrome’s user interface, starting in September. Sites using HTTPS will no longer trigger the green “Secure” text that usually appears in the address bar on Chrome version 69.

After all the talk about Bitcoin using up energy, the first scientific paper calculating how much electricity the cryptocurrency needs is here, and it supports the pessimists. Energy use could double by the end of this year, and if it continues at this rate, by the end of 2019, Bitcoin could be using more electricity than all solar panels produce. Mining crypto is expensive, and with numbers like that, who can resist doing some mining on someone else’s dime?

We already know that pools are gross, but hotel pools and tubs are especially gross, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today. In fact, the water can be so contaminated that it’s been making thousands of Americans sick.

Months after the controversy made headlines and angered consumers, Samsung is only now getting around to trolling Apple for throttling iPhones. A new commercial tells the familiar tale of many Samsung ads: an iPhone user gradually becomes so fed up with Apple’s phone that they ultimately make the switch to the latest Galaxy device, which in this case is the Galaxy S9.

It’s not as good as a new season, but it’ll have to do: Netflix has dropped the trailer for the “series finale” of Sense8, the movie-length cap to the Wachowskis’ two-season Netflix show about eight psychically connected empaths who can literally walk in each other’s shoes.

HTC has officially started teasing its next flagship, the U12 Plus, promising a full reveal of the device next week on May 23rd. Unfortunately for HTC, another leak (courtesy of Evan Blass) has revealed even more details of the upcoming phone, including our best look yet at the design and what appears to be a translucent variant that subtly shows off the internal hardware of the phone.

Smart luggage startup Raden announced today that it has shut down and can no longer handle “returns, exchanges or repairs.” It’s the second dedicated smart luggage company to go under this month (following Bluesmart, which ceased operations May 1st) after major US airlines imposed strict rules on suitcases with batteries earlier this year.

The line between Instagram posts and stories is getting even thinner today. There’s a new feature that will let users share posts — both from their own account and from public accounts they follow — directly to their story as a sticker.

The Google Store now lets customers return gifts, so if you’ve been holding on to a Google product like a Home speaker or an extra phone case because you’re not sure what to do with it, you can now return it for Google Store credit. To return the item, just go to the gift return page. You can sign in to your Google Account to autofill some information, or just provide your name, order number, and ZIP code. Once your order has been found, pick the items you wish to return, and submit those selections to Google. Читать дальше...

After announcing that t was coming at CES and showing us a beta version in late January, Ford is finally rolling out Waze integration with its SYNC 3 infotainment system. iOS users with a SYNC 3-equipped car will now be able to “project” or “mirror” Waze onto the infotainment system, giving them full access to Waze’s maps as well as all of the crowdsourced information about traffic, hazards, and police alerts that the app is known for.

RED’s Hydrogen One phone is coming to Verizon and AT&T sometime this summer, although there’s no word yet as to a final release date or what it will cost to buy the upcoming phone through carriers.

Apple’s Everyone Can Code initiative, which introduces young students to coding through the Swift Playgrounds iPad app, is coming to several schools across the US that support students with vision, hearing, and other assistive needs, the company announced today. Eight schools will be participating in the initial accessibility push, including schools for the deaf and blind in California, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York.

eBay is launching a new feature on its iOS and Android app today that personalizes and curates items for you based on your hobbies, interests, and what you like wearing. The new “Shop your Interests” feature figures out what you like with a brief survey that lets users select things they enjoy shopping for. Options include something as vague and all-encompassing as “cooking” and “gadgets” to “wine,” “tea,” or “Apple.”

Sony is finally rolling out deeper support for Google Assistant on some of its headphones, making good on a promise it made at CES 2018 when it first announced the feature, as spotted by Android Police.

There’s a ton of tools for digital art on the market — tablets, styluses, drawing apps — but it can be hard to make sense of it all if you’re just starting to explore all the options available. When I first started drawing comics for my college newspaper, I had no idea what I was doing. I drew with a ballpoint pen and scanned it, and it looked truly awful. Then I got a Wacom tablet, and my art was still awful, but there was room for growth! With my newfound ability to work in layers and smash that undo button, the only way to go was up! Читать дальше...

Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the company envision using that information in the future.

If you like your speakers to look bespoke and only mildly pretentious, the new PR / 01 speaker from Native Union and La Boite Concept might tickle your fancy. While the speaker’s wooden frame, aluminum controls, and textile grille harken back to a golden age of Hi-Fi, it features modern functions including Bluetooth Apt-X wireless connectivity to stream music and concealed USB and audio ports inside a hidden drawer where there’s space for an optional Qi charger. The company claims the PR / 01... Читать дальше...

Google is breaking up its premium YouTube Red service into two new offerings: a YouTube Music streaming service, available either for free with ads or for $9.99 per month, and a YouTube Premium for original video content, costing $11.99 per month.