Новости за 12.10.2017

U.S. Air Force Photo/Dennis Rogers

President Donald Trump appeared confused about a longstanding military tradition on Wednesday night.

While speaking with Fox News'  Sean Hannity at an Air National Guard hangar in Middletown, Pennsylvania, Trump paused as loudspeakers began playing the tune, "Retreat," in the distance.

It's part of a firmly rooted tradition that predates the American Revolutionary War; the US military tune signals the start and end of the official duty day. Читать дальше...

Copyright DigitalGlobe; Business Insider

More than a dozen wildfires ignited on Sunday in Northern California, a region at its driest this time of year.

Flames have consumed more than 170,000 acres of land, killed at least 23 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate. Napa and Sonoma counties — the heart of California wine country — are especially hard-hit.

Officials have yet to determine the origin of the Santa Rosa wildfires. Читать дальше...

US industry groups representing Apple, IBM and other tech giants have blamed China’s rules on inbound investment for infringing the intellectual property rights of US companies.

Fox News

President Donald Trump revisited his angst from the contentious 2016 election during an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Wednesday night.

Trump said that Democrats had used the controversy surrounding Russia's interference during the election as a scapegoat for Clinton's loss.

"Russia was an excuse used by the Democrats when they lost the election," Trump said. "They lost the election. They sat in a room and they said, 'Wow, we look bad.'"

"They said... Читать дальше...

AP

President Donald Trump took another swipe at NBC News on Wednesday evening, just minutes before his interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity was set to air.

Trump reiterated his earlier attacks on NBC, questioning whether the network's "license" should be challenged — ostensibly because he is personally incensed by news that he deems critical or unflattering. The president called network news "partisan" and "distorted" in his latest tweet on the subject, dubbing it "unfair" to the public. Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

Russians looking forward to incorporating cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin into their lives awoke to less-than-stellar news Tuesday morning, as Russia now intends to block cryptocurrency exchanges and the websites that offer them.

As reported by Reuters, Central Bank First Deputy Governor Sergei Shvetsov called cryptocurrencies “dubious” during a conference in Moscow. He went on to add that digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are something people shouldn’t be able to easily access. Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

WTI recently dipped below $50 per barrel for the first time in a month, erasing the strong September rally. It’s no coincidence that after two weeks of price declines, OPEC has tried to talk up the oil market again, hinting that more drastic action could be forthcoming.

Echoing the world’s top central bankers, OPEC’s Secretary General said that the oil cartel might need to take “extraordinary” measures to balance the oil market next year. “There is a growing consensus that... Читать дальше...

AP/Themba Hadebe

The population of Africa is increasing rapidly. From an estimated 140 million in 1900, it had grown to a billion in 2010.

According to United Nations “medium scenario” projections, this figure will rise to 2.5 billion in 2050 and more than 4 billion in 2100 (see figure below).

Today, one out of six people on Earth live in Africa. These same projections predict that the proportion will be one in four in 2050 and more than one in three by 2100.

What are the reasons for this rapid growth? Читать дальше...

Dropbox has made a name for itself as a leader in file sharing and cloud storage.

David Kasnic/ProPublica Illinois

John Thomas set up the deal the way he had arranged nearly two dozen others. A friend said he wanted to buy as many guns as he could, so Thomas got in touch with someone he knew who had guns to sell.

The three of them met in the parking lot of an LA Fitness in south suburban Lansing at noon on Aug. 6, 2014. Larry McIntosh, whom Thomas had met in his South Shore neighborhood, took two semi-automatic rifles and a shotgun from his car and put them in the buyer's car. Читать дальше...

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A new survey on American college students' views on free speech reveals that nearly half believe hate speech should not be protected under the First Amendment.

The report, a project of the pro-free speech organization Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), found that 48 percent of students do not think the First Amendment should protect hate speech. Thirty-five percent of students do think hate speech should be protected.

According to the study... Читать дальше...

AP Photo/Ronald Zak

Iraq and Iran increased their crude oil shipments abroad last month, taking advantage of lower Saudi exports to key destinations to expand their international market share.

Data from Bloomberg suggests that Iraq, OPEC’s number-two exporter, shipped 3.98 million bpd to foreign clients in September—the highest daily rate since last December. Iran, for its part, exported 2.28 million bpd in September, the highest since February.

One analyst from Energy Aspects... Читать дальше...

GitHub

If you're looking to get hired as a programmer, you're going to need to know the right coding languages.

There are few better windows into the tech trends sweeping Silicon Valley than GitHub, the $2 billion startup that's been called the "Facebook for programmers." Each year, the company puts out its "Octoverse" report which lays out some of those trends, including the most popular programming languages among users of its site. 

GitHub knows a lot about what's going on in coding. Читать дальше...

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

In July, a group of long-time, mostly Latino residents of Los Angeles’s Boyle Heights neighborhood staged protests outside a trendy new coffee shop called Weird Wave Coffee, holding signs that read “Amerikkkano” and “WHITE COFFEE.”

Across the country in Brooklyn’s rapidly gentrifying Crown Heights neighborhood, locals lashed out over a new restaurant with decor that included fake bullet holes and a menu that offered a drink called “40 ounce rosé” (malt liquor and wine) served in a paper bag. Читать дальше...

Venture capitalists have been on a spending spree so far in 2017, but have been funding significantly fewer companies than in the past. According to data from PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, charted here by Statista, the number of deals that closed in the first nine months of 2017 is lower than it has been since 2011. Companies lucky enough to be part of these deals are being valued a lot higher than their predecessors, and are getting a lot more capital as a result. 

AP

The National Institute of Standards and Technology announced last week that it is launching a new study of certain types of DNA analysis used in criminal prosecutions.

These methods, “if misapplied, could lead to innocent people being wrongly convicted,” according to the institute’s statement.

NIST will invite all public and private forensics labs in the U.S. to participate by testing the same set of complex DNA samples, and will compare the results, which will be published online next summer. Читать дальше...

REUTERS/Nacho Doce

Many workers imagine themselves retiring and living along sandy beaches, or in quiet, wooded areas offering optimal peace and quiet. Others, meanwhile, dream of retiring in cities and enjoying the vibrancy that tends to come along with them. If you're still on the fence about where to retire, here are a few good reasons to consider settling down in a city.

1. Lower transportation costs

It costs $8,700 a year, or $725 a month, to own a vehicle... Читать дальше...

Google

Google is permanently disabling a feature on the forthcoming Google Home Mini smart speaker, after a reviewer discovered that it was surreptitiously recording his conversations without his knowledge or consent. 

The issue, says Google, was that the button on top of the device was faulty and would sometimes activate on its own. In response, Google acknowledged that this bug affected a small number of units, and issued a software update that would disable that button entirely... Читать дальше...

CNN

Hillary Clinton said she would gift previous campaign contributions from disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein to charity. Clinton made the announcement in response to a question on the matter in a CNN interview on Tuesday.

"Of course I will do that. I give 10% of my income to charity every year. This will be part of that. There's no doubt about it," Clinton said.

Clinton, who was twice a Democratic presidential candidate — once in 2008 and again in 2016 — also served... Читать дальше...

Justin Sullivan/Getty

California wildfires torched roughly 170,000 acres — a collective area larger than the city of Chicago — early this week. The situation is being called one of the worst firestorms in state history.

A series of fires sparked in the Napa Valley on Sunday night, and grew as powerful winds pulled the flames across fields and freeways. More than 2,000 homes, businesses, and structures have been destroyed, and an estimated 20,000 people have been evacuated. At least 21 people are dead. Читать дальше...

REUTERS/Jeff Kowalsky

General Motors announced on Monday that it has acquired Strobe, Inc., a company that has been developing advanced lidar sensor systems for self-driving cars.

Strobe's technology has the potential to drastically reduce the costs of the sensor hardware needed for fully autonomous vehicles, as well as the physical size of the sensor units themselves. The acquisition gives GM exclusive access -- and brings GM one step closer to mass-producing self-driving cars.

What's the deal? Читать дальше...

REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

A team of researchers from Boston University (BU) have explored the possibility of enhancing a person’s ability to learn and control their behavior — in short, to change how people think — by stimulating the brain.

BU researcher Robert Reinhart used a new form of brain stimulation, called high-definition transcranial alternating current stimulation (HD-tACS), to “turbo charge” two brain regions that influence how we learn.

“If you make an error, this brain area fires. Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

The best is yet to come for US oil production—but it will be a short-lived hurrah, according to Ian Taylor, head of oil trading giant Vitol.

US oil production has steadily increased throughout 2017 as US drillers regained their footing after the oil price crash. What started out at 8.946 million bpd of crude oil production in the first week of January has now reached an average of 9.561 million bpd as of September 29, according to the EIA.

The EIA is expecting... Читать дальше...

Justin Sullivan/Getty

In what is being called one of the worst firestorms in state history, a cluster of blazes has torched more more than 115,000 acres in Northern California since breaking out here on Sunday evening.

The smell of it hangs in the air. In San Francisco, more than an hour's drive from the epicenter of the conflagration, office workers walk to their buildings wearing face masks; construction workers and homeless people who have no choice but to be outside break out regularly into spates of coughing. Читать дальше...

Northern California wine country has been devastated as a series of dangerous fires continues to threaten the areas around Napa and Sonoma.