Новости за 03.07.2018

The US Commerce Department has temporarily lifted a portion of the ban on ZTE that all-but shut down the company almost three months ago. After paying a $1 billion fine, ZTE has been authorized by the United States to continue supporting much of its already deployed equipment and consumer devices. This largely seems designed to keep infrastructure up and running and allow ZTE to deliver security patches to its phones (and other products).

Since the release of Avengers: Infinity War, fans have flocked to a subreddit dedicated to the film’s villain, Thanos. Once mostly a place for jokes, memes, and chatter about the mad Titan’s ideologies, the more than 200,000 members of r/ThanosDidNothingWrong have turned their attention to fulfilling a one-off joke that will decimate their community: randomly banning half of their members. Today, a moderator announced that they’d finally received permission from the subreddit’s administrators. Читать дальше...

Huawei just unveiled the Honor 10 GT, which will be its first smartphone with 8GB of RAM. Its predecessor, the Honor 10, which launched in April for China and in May internationally, only had options for 4GB or 6GB of RAM.

You’ve seen the YouTube videos. It’s a shaky-cam iPhone shot with a wide-eyed someone giggling under their breath “cat food,” or some other miscellaneous thing they allegedly never talk about or search for near or on their device. The climax of this plot line hits in the following hours or days after they’ve muttered said random phrase, and they’re suddenly served an ad on Facebook of the exact same thing they said before. Preposterous! It’s the classic “your phone is listening to everything you... Читать дальше...

A year after Scarlett Johansson’s appearance in 2017’s adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, in which she played a canonically Asian woman and sparked a conversation about whitewashing in Hollywood, the actor has made yet another questionable decision: next year, she’ll be starring in Ghost director Rupert Sanders’ Rub & Tug, a biopic based on the real-life story of massage parlor boss Dante “Tex” Gill. Deadline broke news of the deal shortly before Variety and then The Hollywood Reporter confirmed it; all of the major trades... Читать дальше...

Amazon is expanding its Go cashier-less supermarkets, with the company now confirming a second store coming to Seattle this fall, via a report from GeekWire.

Facebook announced today that it’s acquired London-based artificial intelligence firm Bloomsbury AI, which specializes in natural language processing. According to a post from the official Facebook Academics page, the company says Bloomsbury’s “expertise will strengthen Facebook’s efforts in natural language processing research, and help us further understand natural language and its applications.” In other words, as Facebook continues to hand more platform moderation duties over to algorithms... Читать дальше...

July 4th sees the release of The First Purge, which in spite of its name is the fourth film in the series that started with 2013’s The Purge. The movies all take place in a near-future America where one night a year, laws are suspended, and virtually all crimes are legal. Supposedly, the idea is that citizens “purge” their most antisocial and aggressive tendencies, which results in a more satisfied, mentally healthy population. But the films are also cynical satires about the corruption and indifference... Читать дальше...

Last week, federal investigators reported that the battery of a Tesla Model S reignited twice after the car’s fiery crash in May. This isn’t the first time an electric vehicle battery has caught fire again after being put out. Why does this happen — and how are first responders being trained to deal with new risks from EV batteries?

This piece contains significant spoilers for The Incredibles and Incredibles 2.

Update July 3 12:10PM ET: This article was originally published on April 23, 2018 and has been updated to include video.

While it likely won’t be the best phone of the year, Oppo’s Find X is an early contender for the most fascinating phone of the year thanks to its pop-up camera module, which quickly raises the front and rear cameras whenever they need to be activated. It seems to work remarkably well for a first-generation product. And now a device teardown from Zol shows how Oppo got the feature working.

Ring’s new home security system trades some flash for more value

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Amazon Prime Day, Amazon’s made up holiday of deals and discounts, is basically Black Friday in July. Dell is making that comparison explicit this year, by running a “Black Friday in July” sale that not-so-coincidentally coincides with Amazon’s annual extravaganza.

In perhaps the most improbable leak of a movie ever, Sony Pictures seems to have accidentally uploaded the entire, full length movie of Khali the Killer to YouTube early this morning, instead of a new red band trailer announcing the film’s availability on disc and digital that the company theoretically intended to upload, via CBR.

Businesses can’t sue Yelp to get defamatory reviews removed, California’s Supreme Court has ruled. The decision overturns a lower court’s ruling against Yelp, affirming rules that shield internet platforms from legal liability over users’ posts.

“This is a recipe for addiction.”

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Japanese and European fans of the Animal Crossing franchise will be able to purchase a special edition New Leaf Nintendo 2DS XL by the end of the summer. Two other special edition designs inspired by familiar titles will be launching in Japan in the coming months too. (Sorry, Americans, but most specifically me.)

If you believe the CEOs, a fully autonomous car could be only months away. In 2015, Elon Musk predicted a fully autonomous Tesla by 2018; so did Google. Delphi and MobileEye’s Level 4 system is currently slated for 2019, the same year Nutonomy plans to deploy thousands of driverless taxis on the streets of Singapore. GM will put a fully autonomous car into production in 2019, with no steering wheel or ability for drivers to intervene. There’s real money behind these predictions, bets made on the... Читать дальше...

Light — the company behind the still-incredible looking L16 camera, which packed 16 lenses into one pocket-sized device — may be setting its sights toward the smartphone game, with The Washington Post reporting that the company is experimenting with prototype phones featuring between five and nine camera lenses on the back.

Another take on Alexa in a soundbar

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Microsoft has been reportedly working on a cheaper $400 Surface tablet, and it appears to have passed through the FCC this week. The filing itself (spotted by WinFuture) only reveals a low-powered charger, presumably for a smaller Surface device, but not many other hardware details. Bloomberg previously reported that Microsoft is planning to release 10-inch Surface devices with a more rounded design and USB-C for charging.

Sotheby’s will auction off five unique Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 1 speakers this week, which the two companies are calling a celebration of the art of design. Each speaker has been individually anodized and dyed at B&O’s world-leading aluminum factory in Denmark. This is what makes the pieces genuinely special: Bang & Olufsen fancies itself the best company the world when it comes to crafting aluminum (its high-profile clients like BMW would agree), and it achieves a level of design precision that’s rarely matched. Читать дальше...

Amazon Prime Day is back on July 16th, for the fourth entry in what’s become an annual tradition of deals and discounts on a massive variety of products, with cut prices on everything from TVs to headphones to video games to laptops to Amazon Echo products (of course.)

If you love ubiquitous Japanese virtual idols and solid Chinese mid-range phones, has Xiaomi ever got the collaboration for you: behold the Hatsune Miku Mi 6X. The limited edition device comes in a Miku-themed teal color with printed 1-5,000 serial number, matching wallpapers, and opulent packaging that folds out into a “stage.”