Новости за 13.02.2021

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Last year, the pseudonymous writer behind the SlateStarCodex blog abruptly shut it down, claiming a forthcoming story from The New York Times was going to reveal his real name and potentially put him in danger. Reporter Cade Metz says he was able to easily find the blogger’s real name —Scott Siskind— online. After a farewell post on the blog, Metz says he and his editor were harassed online by its angry fans. Now, Metz’s reporting on SlateStarCodex... Читать дальше...

Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, Robinhood co-CEO Vlad Tenev, and Keith Gill (aka Roaring Kitty) are all on the witness list for an upcoming hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, according to a release from Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA). The hearing, to be conducted virtually, will probe the recent volatility in shares of GameStop following a rally fueled by a group of day traders active on the r/WallStreetBets Reddit board. Читать дальше...

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover at the 2019 British Academy Britannia Awards | Photo by Frazer Harrison/BAFTA LA/Getty Images for BAFTA LA

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover will star in a new Amazon Prime Video series based on the 2005 film Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The movie starred Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as a pair of married killers-for-hire who are assigned to assassinate each other.

Earlier this week, Netflix dropped a surprise announcement that it’s adapting author Brian Jacques’ iconic Redwall books into a new animated movie and TV franchise. Based on the 22-book children’s series that was published from 1986 through 2011, the books span generations of sword-fighting anthropomorphic mice, rabbits, badgers, and other woodland creatures living at the titular Redwall Abbey.

Dr. Michelle Chester, right, rolls up the sleeve of Sandra Lindsay, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, before she is inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, December 14th, 2020. Lindsay was one of the first people in the United States to get a dose of the newly authorized vaccine. | Photo by Mark Lennihan / Pool / Getty Images

The pandemic has been anything but “the great equalizer” that some people called it when it started more than a year ago. Here in the US... Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously on Friday to approve an ordinance banning the use of facial recognition software by its police department and other city agencies, the Star Tribune reported. The ban adds Minneapolis to the list of US cities moving to limit or end the use of such technology by its law enforcement officers and city employees.

That’s The Verge’s Chris Welch wearing Bose’s Noise Canceling Headphones 700 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

You wouldn’t know it from looking at The Verge’s deals coverage this week, but we’ve been getting so many pitches for deals that are on because of Valentine’s Day on Sunday, February 14th, and Presidents’ Day, which is happening the following day in the US. We haven’t featured any of them because, truthfully, better deals have popped up. But below, you’ll find a mix... Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Earlier this month, Aaron Epstein spent $10,000 to buy an ad in The Wall Street Journal to tell AT&T’s CEO he wasn’t happy with his internet service — service that was limited to a paltry 3Mbps (via Ars Technica). Now, AT&T has him hooked up with a fiber connection, and he’s getting over 300 Mbps up and down. All it took was getting interviewed by Ars, the ad going viral on Twitter, and a Stephen Colbert mention.

In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, turning it into the way you’d buy and get paid for items you sell on the ginormous auction site. But the once-happy couple has been breaking up for years — and on Valentine’s Day, some sellers may no longer be able to sell items on eBay at all without connecting an old-school bank account instead.

An image from the Mario Kart 64 listing on the Edge extensions store.

Microsoft’s Edge extensions store appears to be hosting illegal copies of a number of iconic games, including Mario Kart 64, Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Pac-Man, Tetris, Cut The Rope, and even Microsoft’s own smash hit Minecraft. The developers listed on the titles aren’t Microsoft, Nintendo, or any other recognizable game developer, meaning that they almost certainly aren’t official copies of the games.

Amazon’s Ring has so many different video doorbells in the market it’s getting hard to keep track, but one of them is apparently about to get a big bump with some brand-new features: The Ring Wi-Fi Video Doorbell Pro 2 has just leaked in a listing at Best Buy Canada, as spotted by ZatzNotFunny.

Photo by Daniel Slim / AFP via Getty Images

You might not have to ride public transit to work right now, but if you’re one of the many workers who still commutes in New York City (or if you’re someone like me who fantasizes about their old commute), you’ll now have some new celebrity voice talent to keep you company on your bus or subway ride, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) announced Friday.

On January 6th, the day a riot of pro-Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, Twitch removed the iconic PogChamp emote because the person it depicted made statements calling for further violence. Two days later, the company committed to rotating in a new version of PogChamp every 24 hours, meaning many streamers briefly became the new face of the emote — but they were sometimes subjected to harassment following their new site-wide prominence.

Image: NOAA

Let’s be honest, when most people think of places to get good Valentine’s Day cards, the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Twitter account is probably not high up on the list. And yet, it’s posted some cards on the NOAA Satellites account, and I think they’re absolutely fantastic.

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge

Facebook is building a smartwatch as part of its ongoing hardware efforts, according to a new report from The Information. The device is said to be an Android-based smartwatch, though the report does not say whether Facebook intends for the device to run Google’s Wear OS. It also says Facebook is working on building its own operating system for hardware devices and that future iterations of the wearable may run that software instead.