Новости за 22.05.2018

Humans can be great acrobats, but what about Disney robots? Disney Research has one such human-scale robot — called Stickman, because it’s literally a robotic stick — that is capable of aerial acrobatics, like backflips.

Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before European Parliament today was designed to give members a chance to ask Facebook’s CEO about pressing matters involving data privacy, terrorist content, disinformation, and monopoly power, among other issues. Over the course of an hour, Zuckerberg did face sharp inquiries about each of those subjects. But the format of the hearing allowed him only a few minutes to answer dozens of intricate questions. By the time the hearing was over, he had only offered some... Читать дальше...

The General Data Protection Regulation will go into effect on May 25th, and no one is ready — not the companies and not even the regulators.

Last year Netflix made its first attempt at producing a blockbuster action movie with the fantasy-action hybrid Bright, but it appears the service has upped its ambitions considerably. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it will be producing a new Ryan Reynolds action film called Six Underground, which will be directed by Transformers’ Michael Bay.

Nigel Farage echoed American right-wing talking points today in the European Parliament’s meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, claiming that Facebook was censoring conservative voices, citing a heavy drop in engagement on his own page, President Trump’s page, and the pages of “other conservative commentators.” Farage, a British politician who was instrumental in the Brexit vote to leave the EU, currently represents the UK in the European Parliament, which is a legislative body of the EU.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the Model 3 would be getting an update after Consumer Reports said it found some “big flaws” in the electric car’s braking and “difficult-to-use” touchscreen. In response, the publication released a statement praising Tesla for taking its criticisms seriously.

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Interest in the phenomenon of “deepfakes” has died down a little in recent months, presumably as the public comes to terms with what seems like an inevitability in 2018 — that people can and will use AI to create super-realistic fake videos and images. But a recent news story by BuzzFeed surfaced the term again in an unexpected setting, inviting the question: what is a deepfake anyway?

The Comcast website that activates Xfinity routers has a bug that exposes customers’ personal information. As reported by ZDNet, the page for setting up home Wi-Fi and cable services can display the home address of where the router is located and give away the Wi-Fi password. Comcast learned about the bug and fixed its site shortly after the report, and it said it’s conducting an investigation.

Christopher Nolan has seen the future, and it looks a lot like the past. Nolan is one of a handful of directors who’s made no secret of his commitment to shooting movies on film for as long as possible, even as digital filmmaking becomes the default and maybe an inevitability. In the 2012 documentary Side By Side, an enlightening examination of the digital-versus-film divide produced and hosted by Keanu Reeves, even Nolan’s longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister seemed to think the end of film was near. Читать дальше...

European Parliament members asked Mark Zuckerberg today whether Facebook was a monopoly that potentially needed breaking up, echoing concerns voiced in the United States. In a conference with Zuckerberg, German MEP Manfred Weber asked whether the Facebook CEO could name a single European alternative to his “empire,” which includes apps like WhatsApp and Instagram in addition to Facebook. “I think it’s time to discuss breaking up Facebook’s monopoly, because it’s already too much power in only one hand,” said Weber. Читать дальше...

In the European Parliament’s public meeting with Mark Zuckerberg today, Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian MEP, hammered Mark Zuckerberg with a brutal question about his legacy, comparing him unfavorably to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Trust in self-driving cars is slipping after several high-profile crashes, two of them fatal, thrust driverless cars into a negative spotlight, a new poll finds. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of American drivers report they would be too afraid to ride in a fully self-driving vehicle. That number is up significantly from 63 percent in late 2017, according to a survey conducted by AAA. Additionally, almost two-thirds (63 percent) of US adults report they would feel less safe sharing the road... Читать дальше...

Google Maps is rolling out a small, but cute update that lets users change the boring old blue arrow navigation icon on the map to one of three blocky, pixelated cars that can represent your vehicle instead, as spotted by SlashGear.

A week ago, Twitter announced it would become more aggressive in pursuing trolls on its service, a move which seems to have had some unforeseen consequences, judging by the present upheaval in the Bulgarian Twitter community. An increasingly large and unhappy number of people have had their Twitter accounts suspended and messages filtered out of conversations, apparently for the offense of merely tweeting in Cyrillic.

Today Twitter announced it is killing off several of its apps, including Twitter for Android TV, Twitter for Roku, and Twitter for Xbox.

The US and China are working toward a deal that would save ZTE, the Chinese phone maker that’s been on life support since being hit with an American trade ban last month. According to The Wall Street Journal, both countries have agreed to an outline of what a deal might look like that would save the company. Discussions are still ongoing, however, and it’s still not a sure thing that the issue will be resolved.

Slack is giving developers tools to build new integrations that turn clicks on messages into actions on their own platforms. Developers including Asana, Jira, Pocket, and Zendesk have integrated the new “action buttons,” as they are known, letting you perform actions on those services directly from Slack messages. While aspects of this feature were previously available using slash commands, Slack executives say that showcasing the options in a visual interface will boost their usage.

1Password for Mac is getting its first paid upgrade in five years with today’s release of 1Password 7, via MacRumors.

The Chinese audio company Fiio is launching a new music player today that includes one uncommon feature: USB-C. The new USB standard is still a rarity on music players, but Fiio’s M7 will have the port available to use for charging, syncing music, and music playback over USB-C headphones.

One of the biggest appeals of the upcoming RED Hydrogen One phone (other than the holographic screen) are the pogo pins on the back that will let the phone serve as a central hub for accessories, including RED’s signature cameras. Today, RED announced a partnership with camera company Lucid, and now we know what the first of these accessories will look like: a hulking black box with two hardware-synced 4K cameras.

Documents obtained by the ACLU of Northern California have shed new light on Rekognition, Amazon’s little-known facial recognition project. Rekognition is currently used by police in Orlando and Oregon’s Washington County, often using nondisclosure agreements to avoid public disclosure. The result is a powerful real-time facial recognition system that can tap into police body cameras and municipal surveillance systems.

Customizable email app Spark has just launched Spark 2.0, which adds a host of collaborative features for team members to work on and discuss emails together.

Xiaomi will take the wraps off its new flagship smartphone on May 31st, dubbing it the Mi 8 Anniversary Edition to mark the eighth anniversary of the tech brand. The details come from a teaser for the event, spotted by GizmoChina and posted on Weibo.

If you need more evidence that we’re living in an increasingly (and maybe unnecessarily) connected world, there’s a new Kickstarter for smart Tupperware containers that are compatible with Amazon’s Alexa. The Ovie Smarterware food storage system is designed to help you keep track of the food in your fridge so it doesn’t go to waste. The system contains several parts: a SmartTag that goes into an Ovie container, a clip for bags of food, or a universal connector for other forms of storage (like takeout boxes). Читать дальше...