Новости за 19.11.2018

My favorite Black Friday deals to recommend are the ones I can’t resist buying myself — and that’s exactly what happened when I saw that Best Buy is selling the Ring Video Doorbell 2 plus a free third-gen Echo Dot smart speaker for $140 right now.

At times, the latest season of AMC’s The Walking Dead has felt muddled, as if new showrunner Angela Kang was confused about what she wanted the show to be. Is she making a daring drama that surprises audiences with fearless storytelling decisions, or continuing the stunts that have defined the last few seasons? Does she want to improve on the comic-book morality of the long-running comic series, or is she more interested in treading water and setting up an upcoming Rick Grimes movie trilogy?

If you’re looking for a discount on a powerful Android phone, Samsung is discounting its entire 2018 phone lineup, which includes the Galaxy Note 9, S9, and S9 Plus. Each model is currently $200 off of its usual cost, and those prices will last through Cyber Monday (November 26th).

Google’s AI call screening feature, which came with the Pixel 3 at launch and is now rolling out to older Pixel phones, will soon get transcription support, reports 9to5Google. The feature, which allows Google Assistant to pick up suspected spam calls before letting users decide if they want to answer, will be able to save transcriptions of phone calls later this year.

NASA scientists selected the spot on Mars where they plan to land their next rover in 2020 — a region that was likely an ancient river delta on the Red Planet. The spacecraft will aim to touch down in Jezero Crater, an area that may have been habitable billions of years ago. NASA took particular care in selecting this spot to explore; someday, samples collected by the rover could be returned to Earth for study.

Instagram wants to fight fake likes, follows, and comments by more actively removing them. Any fake likes and follows from accounts that use third-party services to get more engagement are going to now be removed for violating the platform’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Use, the company announced as part of policy change today.

In early October, Google rolled out a depth-editing feature for Google Photos on Android, allowing users to adjust the bokeh intensity of their portrait photos. A month later, that same feature has now come to the iOS version. For any portrait images you’ve taken, you can adjust the blur and also tap to change the focus area of those shots.

Twitter has made follower counts appear less prominent on its iOS app by making the font size smaller in a new redesign effort, according to a Twitter spokesperson. The change comes after CEO Jack Dorsey repeatedly said that he wants to rethink how the company could prioritize “meaningful” conversations over numbers like retweets, likes, and follows.

Newegg’s Black Friday ad is out, and it has a pretty robust selection of deals on TVs like LG’s OLED, smart home products including the Nest Thermostat and Indoor Camera, and PC gaming components like motherboards, GPUs, and Intel i7 processors.

Satechi has a new wireless charger that joins the exclusive club of charging pads that actually support USB-C instead of Micro USB or a proprietary plug.

Once Upon a Deadpool’s first teaser can almost be viewed as Ryan Reynolds’ attempt to prove to Disney that Deadpool can exist within a family-friendly universe — but maybe that’s overly pessimistic.

After launching the world’s first end-game nuke last week, a group of Fallout 76 players wanted to perform an experiment. What would happen if they launched multiple nukes at once? Turns out, detonating too many bombs will overload the game.

Microsoft is bringing its Skype calling service to Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices this week. Amazon’s Echo range will be able to access Skype’s basic calling, and hardware like the Echo Show will also include video calling support for Skype. This integration also lets Skype users call mobile and landlines using SkypeOut, and simply call contacts by saying “Alexa, call Tom on Skype” to activate a call.

Riot Games, the developer behind League of Legends, is partnering with Marvel Entertainment to bring League lore to comics. It’s a rare crossover for the nine-year-old multiplayer strategy game, the storytelling for which has mainly been kept to its website. The two companies are bringing a new graphic novel called League of Legends: Ashe: Warmother that’s set to come out next May.

Smart home security company Abode is releasing an all-in-one security device that combines elements of three different products into one. The Iota home security system contains a 1080p security camera, a motion sensor, and a gateway (the hub of the security system). It can be connected to the internet via a wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection. A battery with enough capacity for six hours of operation should keep the system working if the power goes out, while an optional 4G connection is available in case the same happens to your internet. Читать дальше...

Launch provider Virgin Orbit, the spinoff of Richard Branson’s space tourism venture Virgin Galactic, put its new rocket in the air for the first time this weekend — though the vehicle didn’t go to space. On Sunday, the company performed its first captive-carry test flight with the rocket, keeping it firmly attached to the wing of its carrier airplane. The rocket’s engine didn’t ignite, but the flight clears the way for the very first test launch of Virgin Orbit’s system next year.

Apple is reportedly cutting production orders for its newest iPhones, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal that cites sources that claim that demand for the new devices — especially the iPhone XR — has been weaker than expected.

There are no collectibles in Half-Life. It’s incredible.

That’s not how I would have praised the groundbreaking first-person shooter, which turns 20 years old today, when I first played it. At that point, I might have described how Half-Life infused sci-fi shooters with a sense of realism. It set an alien invasion in an Earthbound scientific research facility called Black Mesa, where an ordinary man (or at least, an ordinary MIT-trained theoretical physicist) named Gordon Freeman is forced to fight for his life ... Читать дальше...

eBay has released its Black Friday deals, and some are already live. With discounts on Xbox One X bundles and the new 2018 MacBook Air with Retina Display at different storage options, the deals that are staggered throughout the week are looking pretty good. On Wednesday, eBay will also offer mobile deals including 30 percent off its Dell store and 20 percent off its Adidas store. We’ve picked out the highlights here and will keep updating this post with the latest deals.

The new Studio retains all of the looks of the prior model, but backs them up with useful upgrades

Facebook has launched a £4.5 million ($6 million) fund to train around 80 new local journalists in the UK as part of a new “Community News Project.” The goal, according to Facebook, is to encourage more reporting from towns that have lost their local newspapers and reporters. “Community news is shared widely on Facebook, on pages and in community groups, and this collaboration will help us reach communities which don’t currently benefit from in-depth community news,” said Karyn Fleeting, head of audience at newspaper publisher Reach PLC. Читать дальше...

Pandora Premium subscribers will now be able to stream music through Amazon Echo devices and third-party Alexa speakers that support the service, Pandora tells The Verge. Users will be able to stream songs, full albums, and playlists from Pandora’s on-demand service to Echo devices, and you can now set Pandora as the default music library on Alexa.

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Expecting Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to be a good party game goes without saying: it’s essentially the same Smash Bros. that fans have loved for years, just taken to the natural limit. But when I recently had the chance to play a few hours of Nintendo’s character fighter, it was Ultimate’s single-player offering that stood out to me the most. The recently announced Spirits mode is much more important than it first seems.

Chinese selfie app and smartphone maker Meitu has announced that Xiaomi is effectively taking over its hardware business. Future phones will carry the Meitu brand, but Xiaomi will be responsible for design, R&D, and sales, while Meitu will still be involved in camera software. Basically, it’s a safe bet that Xiaomi’s Mi Home stores across the world will start carrying a bunch of wild selfie-focused cameraphones in the near future.