Новости за 13.12.2018

Grocery delivery company Instacart announced today that its partnership with Amazon-owned Whole Foods is coming to an end. Instacart was in the midst of a five-year deal signed in 2016 that established the company as Whole Foods’ exclusive delivery carrier, but the deal became complicated when Amazon acquired Whole Foods in 2017. The details of how the contract was ended are unclear, but it makes sense that Amazon would now want to deliver its own groceries through its own Prime Now and AmazonFresh services. Читать дальше...

YouTube is on a massive sweep of spam accounts, and the company is alerting creators that they may see a “noticeable decrease” in their subscriber counts as the cleanup is conducted.

It could change how we regulate the vehicles in the sky

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The best part of Nintendo’s Switch Online subscription service is the included classic games. Since launch, Nintendo has steadily added more NES titles, including some enhanced additions; just this week came a version of Metroid that starts you out with a huge array of powers just ahead of the big battle with Ridley. But what’s the best way to play these 8-bit classics? The Switch Joy-Con and Pro Controller are both passable, and there are also a few solid aftermarket controllers as well. Now... Читать дальше...

CBS has released a new trailer for its upcoming second season of Star Trek: Discovery, highlighting the peril that will face the crews of the USS Discovery and USS Enterprise when the show returns in January.

It’s that time of year again when the annual list of worst passwords is released and we see that we have learned nothing from our mistakes. This year’s list features the usual suspects, like “password” at number two and “123456” at number one for the fifth year in a row, but in an upsetting turn of events, “donald” makes its debut on the list this year, at number 23.

Google has had an app called Family Link for a little over a year now, designed to give parents more control over their kids’ use of their Android phones — and even turn them off at dinner time. Now it’s expanding the app to support Chromebooks, adding many of the same features to that platform.

Postmates, the food and grocery delivery company that operates across 134 cities in the US, has announced an autonomous delivery robot called Serve. This small robot can carry 50 pounds of cargo and has a range of 30 miles, which Postmates claims gives it the capacity to handle around a dozen deliveries per day. The initial aim is to be able to make deliveries much more quickly by avoiding traffic by traveling on the sidewalk. Ultimately, it hopes to cut out the emissions of the cars and motorcycles... Читать дальше...

YouTube has announced that its YouTube Music Charts will now be integrated within the YouTube Music app on users’ home screens, and they will be available through search. Previously, these charts were only parked and viewable at a separate domain.

It’s hard to believe, but Gunstar Heroes is actually playable using an Amazon Fire TV remote control.

Netflix is currently testing a rewind-like function that will give users the ability to replay a specific scene more conveniently. The new tool allows people to immediately rewatch a scene without having to mess around with Netflix’s standard time bar at the bottom of the screen, according to the Los Angeles Times.

If you’re looking to buy a fast gaming laptop that’s also a stellar value, that’s usually a tough feat to pull off. However, at just under $1,200, HP’s Omen 15t definitely qualifies. This 15-inch laptop is stocked with an 8th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, a 144Hz IPS display, and, most impressively for the price, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1070.

At long last, space tourism venture Virgin Galactic has sent a vehicle into space. Early Thursday morning, the company’s passenger spaceplane, the VSS Unity, ignited its rocket engine longer than ever before over the Mojave Desert, soaring above the 50-mile boundary that the Air Force defines as the beginning of space. This is the first time Virgin Galactic has crossed that line in its 14-year journey to give paying customers a taste of spaceflight.

The best media-based drinking games have simple rules, but will keep players consistently buzzed. Drinking every time someone says “Hansel,” “Gretel,” or “Witch” during Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, or watching Highlander and drinking for every flashback, a decapitation, or instance of, “There can be only one” works perfectly. Likewise, if you take a sip whenever anyone removes an article of clothing or has sex in Netflix’s new Australian series Tidelands, you’ll be drinking early and often ... Читать дальше...

Qualcomm is trying to get the latest iPhones banned from China after a win in court earlier this week delivered a preliminary ban on Apple’s older phones. According to the Financial Times, Qualcomm has now asked Chinese courts to issue an injunction that bans Apple from selling the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR within the country due to the same case of possible patent infringement.

Amazon’s free holiday shipping promotion, which removes the minimum $25 purchase requirement for non-Prime members, has been extended until December 18th. Orders placed by then are guaranteed to arrive in time for Christmas. Amazon says it has also expanded free one-day shipping and free same-day delivery for Prime members to more than 10,000 cities this year, so last-minute gift buyers can shop for holiday items until December 24th.

Today’s Google Doodle takes its viewers on a short, astronomical journey, showing how the combination of a distant space rock, the Sun, and Earth’s atmosphere manage to bring us an incredible natural light show.

2018 was a banner year for comics. Manga ranged from blockbuster action franchises, like Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia, to mournful reflections on gender non-conformity, like Riyoko Ikeda’s Claudine. Kids gobbled up the latest installments of Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man, Svetlana Chmakova’s Berrybrook Middle School, and Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet. The garden of indie comics blossomed with creators new and old who experimented with genre, form, and style.

Google is adding a new transit option to Maps: Lime scooters and bikes. Maps will now offer the option to direct you toward the nearest shared vehicle and factor that into your travel time.

Brace yourselves, you’re going to learn so much Spanish

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Here at The Verge, we’ve been at this video thing for over seven years — from first looks at new devices to full-fledged, in-depth reviews. It’s kind of like that parent who not only attended every school event, but made cupcakes for it, too. The video team is everywhere.

Gris opens in a world devoid of color. As a nameless, silent young woman, you traverse the desolate landscape, filled with crumbling ruins and a bleak sky, with an almost balletic sense of movement. You float and glide through the world. Slowly you’re able to bring color and light back, and as the world morphs, so does the main character. Gris starts out simple and stark, but ends as one of the most beautiful games ever made.

To say that this year’s YouTube Rewind didn’t go over well with the YouTube community would be quite an understatement. This year’s Rewind, an annual video made by YouTube that’s supposed to encompass a year in YouTube culture, is officially the most disliked video on the platform. It has more than 10 million dislikes, overtaking Justin Bieber’s 2010 song “Baby,” which has just under 10 million dislikes. While it took Bieber’s video approximately eight years to rack up that dislike count, YouTube Rewind beat it in closer to eight days. Читать дальше...

Apple has announced a big expansion of its US operations, at the heart of which is a new $1 billion campus in Austin, its third in the city. Apple’s approach comes in marked contrast to Amazon’s recent search for the location of its second headquarters, which over the course of a year saw numerous cities publicly compete to offer the biggest incentives for the e-commerce giant. New York’s decision to offer around $2 billion in incentives to Amazon has drawn particularly fierce and ongoing criticism. Читать дальше...

A month ago, when Amazon announced that it would build regional offices in New York and Virginia at great expense to the taxpayers there, I wrote that it had misunderstood the moment: