Новости за 10.03.2021

Image: Recode

Today, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has found the growing trend of celebrity-endorsed special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) dangerous enough to warn investors in a new statement: just because a celebrity is participating in or endorsing a SPAC, doesn’t mean you should invest.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon is withholding ebook and audiobook versions of works it publishes through its in-house publishing arms from US libraries, according to a new report from The Washington Post. In fact, Amazon is the only major publisher that’s doing this, the report states. It’s doing so because the company thinks the terms involved with selling digital versions of books to libraries, which in turn make them available to local residents for free through ebook lending platforms like Libby, are unfavorable. Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Facebook Gaming has announced a path to partnership for streamers in its Level Up creators program, which is the site’s equivalent of Twitch’s affiliates. It’s pretty grueling, and eligibility isn’t judged on the same metrics as its Level Up program, which allows streamers to start monetizing their broadcasts. Partners, however, get a slew of benefits, including a direct line to Facebook’s support team, a private Facebook Gaming community group, partner-only invites to Facebook Gaming events... Читать дальше...

Images: Kia

Kia has given its next electric vehicle a name and is getting ready to pull the cover off the new car sometime within the next few weeks. Dubbed “EV6,” it’ll be the first electric vehicle that Kia is building on the new platform it’s sharing with parent company Hyundai — the same platform that Apple was reportedly interested in using to power... whatever it’s building before talks with the Korean automakers broke down.

Photo by Scott Taetsch / Getty Images

The Miami Heat has suspended Meyers Leonard indefinitely after he used an anti-Semitic slur during a Twitch stream on Monday.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

The Xbox Series X / S and PS5 consoles haven’t even reached the six-month mark yet, but game modes that favor performance or visual quality are already common. It feels like not a week goes by without a game getting an update to allow players to pick between a demanding 4K resolution or sacrificing some resolution and quality for 60fps or even 120fps modes.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Twitter has devised a potential solution to its problematic image cropping issue: no more cropping. The company said on Wednesday it’s now testing a “what you see is what you get” image preview within the tweet compose box and experimenting with displaying full-frame images. That way, images will show up in the Twitter timeline looking just as they did when the user was composing the tweet.

Toyota announced earlier this year that it’s gearing up for the release of its first mass-market EVs for the US, but now it also appears ready to show off one for Europe as soon as next week, according to a new microsite launched Wednesday.

Photo by Paul Chinn / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

It could help us be ready for the next pandemic

Image: HTC

HTC has announced a new set of trackers for its Vive virtual reality headsets, including one that captures facial expressions and mouth movements. The $129.99 Vive Facial Tracker attaches to the Vive Pro headset. It uses two cameras and an infrared illuminator to record lip, cheek, and jaw movements and then translates that into virtual facial expressions. HTC says the product is “coming soon.”

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic closed most offices, more and more official papers were being turned into PDF documents. (PDF stands for Portable Document Format; it is a standard created by Adobe in the early 1990s that allows paper documents to be turned into exact digital copies.) These days, hard copy paperwork is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule. However, even digital documents have to be signed. You can do it the long way — print those documents out, sign them, and then scan them back into your computer ... Читать дальше...

Classic arcade-style Ninja Turtle action is making a return. Today, publisher Dotemu announced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, which it says was “inspired by the classic TMNT brawlers we all kicked shell in as kids,” including the early ‘90s hit Turtles in Time.

Today is “MAR10 Day,” and although it is not Mario’s “birthday” (which is September 13th), this day usually has some of the best deals on games published by Nintendo. Nintendo rarely discounts its first-party games, so if you recently purchased a Switch and want to stock up on some games, today is a good day to expand your game library.

Semiconductor production, as shown above in GlobalFoundries’ European factory, is an extremely capital-intensive business.

The European Union wants to double its chip manufacturing output to 20 percent of the global market by 2030. The goal is part of its new Digital Compass plan, announced yesterday, which aims to boost “digital sovereignty” by funding various high-tech initiatives.

Nikon has announced development of the Z9, its highest-end mirrorless camera to date and the first in the Z-mount line that the company describes as a flagship. Actual details are thin, but Nikon promises that it will deliver “the best still and video performance in Nikon history” upon release.

Of course John Legere, the former CEO of T-Mobile, has jumped into NFTs by spending $888,888.88 on one made by Steve Aoki, according to Rolling Stone. It’s nice to know he’s keeping busy after stepping down from T-Mobile’s CEO gig on April 1, 2020.

Samsung has just announced an Unpacked event coming up on March 17th, 2021, its second for the year so far. The invitation calls the event “Galaxy Awesome Unpacked.” Between recent A-series leaks and the chaotic, “awesome”-themed promotional video for last year’s models, it seems safe to assume that we’ll see the Galaxy A52 and A72 devices debut.

Image: Verkada

Verkada, a Silicon Valley security startup that provides cloud-based security camera services, has suffered a major security breach. Hackers gained access to over 150,000 of the company’s cameras, including cameras in Tesla factories and warehouses, Cloudflare offices, Equinox gyms, hospitals, jails, schools, police stations, and Verkada’s own offices, Bloomberg reports.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter is actively working on a “big overhaul” of its TweetDeck platform, which lets you arrange lists and feeds into easy-to-read vertical rows, and it plans to share more about the project publicly later this year, product chief Kayvon Beykpour said in an interview with The Verge published Tuesday.

A new bill to bring back net neutrality is on its way, supported by one of the open internet’s most fervent advocates. At an advocacy event last month, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) announced that he would be introducing a measure in the next few “weeks” that would engrave the no throttling, block, or paid fast lanes rules into law.

Image: Sonos

There wasn’t much left that we didn’t already know, but today, Sonos has officially announced its latest speaker, the Sonos Roam. Just as The Verge reported last week, the Roam is a portable battery-powered speaker priced at $169. Preorders start today, and it will go on sale on April 20th.