Новости за 26.12.2018

Apple Music doesn’t offer a packaged way to look at your yearly listening habits, but a new app does, as spotted by TechCrunch. Made by NoiseHub, the app is called “Music Year in Review,” and shows an overview of what you listened to throughout the year on Apple Music, similar to Spotify’s “Wrapped” program.

Billionaire Reid Hoffman has acknowledged that he partially funded a group that used disinformation tactics in Alabama’s 2017 special election in an effort to sink Republican candidate Roy Moore, according to The Washington Post. Last week, Facebook suspended five accounts linked to the operation for “engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior.” One of those accounts belonged to Jonathon Morgan, CEO of cybersecurity company New Knowledge. Morgan has said he was acting alone as a researcher and not through New Knowledge. Читать дальше...

Compared to the past couple of years, 2018 was a relatively uneventful 12 months for Samsung. The company largely kept on keeping on, stuck with what’s been working for the past few years, and managed to avoid major product debacles or new corruption scandals.

It’s practically a rule in tech: If it has electricity, eventually it will run Doom. Now a Roomba might have been a bit tricky to work into that equation, given the lack of things like a screen, but game developer Rich Whitehouse has found a way with a new tool he calls “Doomba” that can take floor map data from the smart cleaning robots and convert it into Doom levels, according to Polygon.

When Lily Hevesh opened Twitter and saw YouTube’s Christmas video, it looked very familiar. That’s because it was her own.

Another example of the US government’s unease around Huawei — and efforts to keep the Chinese tech giant’s influence at bay — was reported earlier this week by The Wall Street Journal. In 2014, Huawei reached a deal with the Washington Redskins to provide Wi-Fi in the viewing suites at FedEx Field during games, according to the story. But that agreement came undone after a government advisor issued an “unofficial federal complaint” to the team, citing the same national security concerns that Congress... Читать дальше...

The year is almost over, which means it’s time to start dreaming about all of the great games you’ll be playing in 2019 — and it sure looks like there will be a lot. Next year is shaping up to be packed with notable releases, from the charming world of Animal Crossing to the violent action of Gears of War.

2018 should have been a banner year for Google. It marked the 20th anniversary of the company itself, the 10 year anniversary of Android, and the 10 year anniversary of Chrome. But 2018 has been a year of reckoning for most of the big tech giants, and the scales have fallen from everybody’s eyes when they look at Google. From privacy to products to the treatment of its own employees and contractors, the banner is tattered.

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Does it matter whether you got an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone for the holidays? Not if you want to play games. The great thing about smartphones and tablets is that, no matter what device you get, there’s going to be some great games for it. So if you were lucky enough to unwrap a new portable and are looking for ways to waste some time, here are a few great options.

Jack Black is heading to YouTube, and wants to be bigger than Ninja and PewDiePie.

The Verge’s Why’d You Push That Button squad is in the holiday spirit, so in this week’s episode, hosts Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany discuss hashtag holidays. You might not know the term, but you definitely know the phenomenon. Maybe you’ve seen people participate in #NationalSiblingsDay, or #WorldNutellaDay, or maybe even #NationalBoyfriendDay. Why do people post, and why do they use those hashtags? Also, who invents these holidays?

If you’re getting a new gaming PC as a gift this holiday season, you’re going to want some games to play. So to help you out, we’ve collected a list of free and paid PC games that you should definitely check out. Some of these titles are graphically intensive (i.e. you need a powerful PC to run them well), so make sure your drivers are up to date and that you fulfill the recommended specs.

Microsoft’s Xbox One has been on the market for more than five years, which means there are hundreds of good games for it. While there haven’t been many top exclusives for the Xbox One this year, there are still some classic games you should absolutely try. And don’t forget Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription ($9.99 a month) that provides access to more than 100 Xbox One games. If you just unwrapped a new Xbox One and you’re looking for some games to play, here are a few of our favorites to get you started. Читать дальше...

Snapchat first made users fall in love by creating lenses that could turn them into dogs. Now, the company is going full circle, and adding lenses specifically for dogs.

For Facebook, the year kicked off with the promise of a fresh start. “My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, referring to the hate speech, foreign interference, and concerns over smartphone addiction that had defined the company’s previous year. “We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we’re successful this year then we’ll end 2018... Читать дальше...