Новости за 29.04.2016

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Amazon is on a streak, with four consecutive quarters posting a profit.

For investors in Amazon, who have become accustomed to the company's focus on revenue and user growth instead of on the bottom line, the newfound profits are a novelty.

Here's how Amazon's three main businesses compare in terms of operating margins, including stock-based compensation:

• North America: 3.5%
• International: 1.3%
• Amazon Web Services: 23.5%

In other words... Читать дальше...

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been labeled as "the next Industrial Revolution" because of the way it will change the way people live, work, entertain, and travel, as well as how governments and businesses interact with the world.

Reuters

The CIA violated federal laws and its own internal regulations by hiring independent contractors for a wide variety of intelligence and national security-related work that was supposed to be performed by government employees, according to a CIA Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit report obtained by VICE News in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The report said the CIA "relies heavily on independent contractors to accomplish important facets of its mission,"... Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

The Apple employee found dead at the company's California headquarters was Edward Mackowiak, 25, the Santa Clara Coroner's office said on Thursday.

Mackowiak's body was found Wednesday at Apple's Cupertino campus, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County coroner's office said. She did not release a cause of death.

On Wednesday, local media reported that the victim had suffered a head wound and a gun was discovered near his body.

Meet Microsoft Flow: A free way to connect all of your cloud services — including Slack, GitHub, Twitter, and Google Drive — together in new and novel ways. 

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Perhaps more than any other Supreme Court justice, the late Antonin Scalia cared a great deal about language, often spending time carefully consulting several dictionaries and usage books. He took pains to use words precisely.

And if there's one phrase that exemplified his testy relationship with language — and by extension originalism, the issue for which Scalia was most controversial — it was "beg the question."

Misuse of the phrase was Scalia's biggest pet peeve. Читать дальше...

Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino

Nothing about the pushing, shoving, and chanting that accompanied this month's congressional vote in favor of impeaching Brazil's president was very edifying — one man, however, threw all political protocol to the wind.

Legislator Jair Bolsonaro took to the podium to announce that he was dedicating his "yes" vote to the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who he described as, "the terror of Dilma Rousseff."

It was a literal description. Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

LeEco, the company partnered with the startup electric-car maker Faraday Future, is apparently in talks to scoop up a giant piece of real estate from Yahoo, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.

The land is about 3 miles from LeEco's newly opened US headquarters in San Jose, California. The lot is approved for up to 3 million square feet of research and development space.

According to the Business Journal, Yahoo intended to use the lot as a second campus. Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

Wow.

After underwhelming results from Apple Inc, Google Inc and other big tech names, investors finally found a friend in Facebook Inc after the company shredded Wall Street's forecasts for revenue, profit and user growth.

Facebook's shares jumped 11 percent to a record high of $120 in early trading on Thursday, giving a $30 billion boost to the social networking company's market value.

"FB remains in a class by itself across the combination of scale... Читать дальше...

REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Amazon's planning to "significantly" increase its spending in video content as it gets more serious about taking on Netflix in the online video-streaming space.

During its earnings call with the press on Thursday, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky stressed that the company's seeing better engagement and conversions from Prime members who use the video service, and that a lot of future investments will focus on boosting video offerings.

"One of the larger investments... Читать дальше...

Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

It hasn’t been a great week for Big Oil. BP reported an 80 percent decline in earnings, and ExxonMobil lost its coveted AAA credit rating, which it has held uninterrupted for more than eight decades.

Low oil prices are still wreaking havoc on the industry, hollowing out profits and forcing companies to cut back on spending and personnel. It is a sign of the times that BP’s $532 million net profit – which excludes nearly $1 billion in fresh charges from the Deepwater Horizon disaster way back in 2010 ... Читать дальше...

http://syndication.ap.org/AP.Distro.ContentBroker2/ContentBroker.aspx?contentid=d61e7ae7f50746389d934cbf2d9cbabc&iid=213816762bf74d27ba32b666ad2cac41&rsn=1&recordid=cac69339772a430f80487e581b8f334f&filingId=4aef7dff480c4ca1b33a1342ad8864f0&role=Preview&reldt=2016-04-28T18:37:49&media=Photo&sz=41258&dest=ak&trF=NVJL101&ofn=Las%2bVegas%2bRaiders%2bFootball.JPEG&fmt=jpg&relativeUrl=jpg/2016/201604/28/d61e7ae7f50746389d934cbf2d9cbabc.jpg&s3Key=versions/preview-v01.jpg&authToken=eNoti7sO

YouTube

Every copy of Windows 10 comes with Cortana, Microsoft's virtual assistant. 

By default, Cortana opens links in the Microsoft Edge browser, and performs searches using the Microsoft Bing search engine. It's a pretty shrewd bit of corporate synergy that's driving Bing to new heights. 

But that was just the default setting. With the help of some third-party tools and a minimum of fuss, you could change Cortana's browser to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, and Cortana's search engine to whatever you want... Читать дальше...

Reuters/Carlo Allegri

There are two Trump campaigns underway: one, to secure the GOP nomination and two, to remake Trump into an acceptable presidential candidate.

Especially after Trump’s resounding wins last night and in recent primaries, a new Donald may be the heavier lift.

Housebreaking this unruly Golden Retriever will require buy-in from his master.

Trump has worked hard to win votes and primaries; now he has to win self-control. He has to listen to his advisors... Читать дальше...

Source: REUTERS/Vincent West

What is it that determines who we are sexually attracted to?

This is a surprisingly complex question to answer because attractiveness appears to depend upon a number of factors.

Some of these are biological, others are psychological, and yet others have to do with our social environments.

Below are ten of the most interesting findings scientists have documented when it comes to attraction.

1. We tend to be attracted to people who look like us. Читать дальше...

Reuters

Islamic State earns millions of dollars a month running car dealerships and fish farms in Iraq, making up for lower oil income after its battlefield losses, Iraqi judicial authorities said on Thursday.

Security experts once estimated the ultra-radical Islamist group's annual income at $2.9 billion, much of it coming from oil and gas installations in Iraq and Syria.

The U.S.-led coalition has targeted Islamic State's financial infrastructure, using air strikes to reduce its ability to extract... Читать дальше...

Lina Hayes/Flickr

When Maria Vrind, a former gymnast from Volendam in the Netherlands, found that the only way she could put her socks on in the morning was to lie on her back with her feet in the air, she had to accept that things had reached a crisis point.

“I had become so stiff I couldn’t stand up,” she says. “It was a great shock because I’m such an active person.”

It was 1993. Vrind was in her late 40s and working two jobs, athletics coach and a carer for disabled people... Читать дальше...

Tony Dejak

Baltimore police shot a teenage boy on Wednesday afternoon who was carrying a fake gun, in a case that brought echoes of the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in a Cleveland park two years ago.

The boy suffered what police said were non life-threatening injuries to a “lower extremity,” the Baltimore Sun reports. Police Commissioner Kevin Davis declined to identify the boy, who he said was 13, and said he believed officers had acted appropriately. He is expected to recover, police say. Читать дальше...

Jerry Lampe/Reuters

We often use big, overarching ideas to help us understand the world and the opportunities contained within. These narratives, which can change over time, are used to create context. They give us a frame of reference for comprehending the news and events that affect our outlook on things.

China’s economic prowess is one of these new paradigms that has emerged, but many people still can’t really wrap their heads around the scale or scope of it.

It’s happened suddenly... Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

The Supreme Court on Thursday approved a rule change that would let U.S. judges issue search warrants for access to computers located in any jurisdiction despite opposition from civil liberties groups who say it will greatly expand the FBI's hacking authority.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts transmitted the rules to Congress, which will have until Dec. 1 to reject or modify the changes to the federal rules of criminal procedure. If Congress does not act, the rules would take effect automatically. Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

Federal agents who patrol the U.S. border with Mexico want 23 more miles (37 km) of fences, better radios and more aerial drones to tighten the southern frontier, according to an unpublished U.S. government study that influences budget requests.

The modest scope of the requirements, details of which were contained in internal emails seen by Reuters and described by Border Patrol officials in interviews, contrasts sharply with calls by Republican presidential candidates... Читать дальше...

REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

President Barack Obama is no fan of Republican economic orthodoxy.

Speaking with The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin on his economic accomplishments and failings during his tenure as president, Obama said that, above almost all else, the one thing the US should do is stop following what he calls the "mythology" that's been built around the "Reagan revolution."

Obama said:

If we can't puncture some of the mythology around austerity, politics or... Читать дальше...

Getty Images

Women would be required to register for the military draft under a House committee's bill that comes just months after the Defense Department lifted all gender-based restrictions on front-line combat units.

A divided Armed Services Committee backed the provision in a sweeping defense policy bill that the full House will consider next month, touching off a provocative debate about the role of women in the military.

The panel also turned aside a measure backed by... Читать дальше...

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Naples, Florida, a wealthy beach town on the Gulf of Mexico, known for its golf courses and high-end shopping, and a favorite hangout for Canadian snowbirds trying to escape their cold winters, has a problem:

Pending home sales in the first quarter plunged 23% from a year ago, according to the Naples Area Board of Realtors. Closed sales plunged 19%. Overall inventory soared 33%. In the two mid-price ranges from $300,000 to $1 million, inventory soared about 42%! Читать дальше...

BI Intelligence

The way consumers access media content is drastically evolving. Viewers once limited to watching programming by a cable or satellite provider at a specific time and via a certain channel package are increasingly moving to over-the-top content (OTT) — or content that's streamed over the internet — for its greater selection and convenience.

Since streaming media devices debuted in the mid-2000s riding in the wake of new OTT services like Netflix, they've grown in popularity. Читать дальше...