Новости за 28.04.2018

From the game to your wall

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Avengers: Infinity War is now out in theaters, the culmination of 10 years of superhero movies. Starting with Iron Man in 2008, the franchise’s 19 installments have built on one another to form a massive, cohesive story. That’s daunting 31 hours of story that set up this latest movie. Fortunately, YouTube supercut channel Burger Fiction has you covered with a 17 minute video that hits all the high points of the franchise.

Forget a smart speaker, soon you may be able to control your smart home with a few taps on your wall. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research have developed a way to make your walls smart, at a cost of $20 per meter, as spotted by NBC News.

On Sunday, private space company Blue Origin will launch its third New Shepard rocket, according to founder Jeff Bezos. The launch is scheduled to take place at 9:30AM EDT / 8:30AM CDT, and will be live streamed.

Last weekend, I finally got around to watching The Bad Batch, Ana Lily Amirpour’s second feature — her first being the excellent vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. I knew from its previews that The Bad Batch would be weird, but I guess I thought it would be “unique take on a classic genre” weird, like her last film was. Instead, it’s just downright bizarre.

Last week in this column, we featured a sale on Amazon’s smart home hubs, the Echo and Echo Dot, which were on sale for $84.99 and $39.99, respectively. This week you can get both of those devices, as well as the rest of the Echo family of devices, for even less. If you don’t mind refurbished, you can get an Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Plus and Echo Show for up to $20 off the usual refurb price. The best deal is probably on the Certified Refurbished Echo Plus for $109.99 (usually $129.99). A new Echo Plus costs $149.99. This deal ends on Monday... Читать дальше...

Facebook is an emotional labor machine, and if you want to leave it, you’re going to have to start doing a lot of work

Ever since Nick Fury first showed up at Tony Stark’s house to plug the Avengers Initiative at the end of 2008’s Iron Man, post-credit scenes have been a staple of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Sometimes they’re just a little gag, a bonus for sitting through the credits, like the sequence of the Avengers silently eating shawarma together in a partially wrecked New York City takeout after the catastrophic fight in The Avengers, or the Howard the Duck cameo after Guardians of the Galaxy. Much more often... Читать дальше...

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has warned that the current boom in artificial intelligence has created a “technology renaissance” that contains many potential threats. Writing in the company’s annual Founders’ Letter, published Friday, the Alphabet president struck a note of caution. “The new spring in artificial intelligence is the most significant development in computing in my lifetime,” writes Brin. “Every month, there are stunning new applications and transformative new techniques.” But, he adds... Читать дальше...

In response to stories about the 15-month jail sentence given to Eric Lundgren, Microsoft has written a strident blog post detailing its perspective on the case. The post, titled “The facts about a recent counterfeiting case brought by the U.S. government,” consists of several assertions drawn from the case itself, the email evidence that was submitted for it, and Microsoft’s own take.

The Trump administration plans to try and freeze Obama-era fuel-efficiency standards starting in 2021 in a bid to reverse another of the former president’s crowning policies aimed at combating climate change, according to a report from The Washington Post. The report, which cites a federal official who has viewed the drafted proposal, says the Trump administration would go even further by restricting a state’s ability to set its own fuel standards, which would be a strike against California and its strict state-specific emissions rules. Читать дальше...

Bill Gates has pledged $12 million in funding to fuel advances toward a universal flu vaccine, STAT News reports. After this year’s devastating flu season, the race for a shot that could protect against a broad range of flu viruses for years on end feels even more urgent — but is $12 million really enough to help?

Sprint and T-Mobile are reportedly on the verge of finally agreeing on a merger, according to a report from CNBC, which claims that the two carriers are closing in on a $26 billion dollar deal as early as this Sunday.