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Arslan Kaipkulov, 15, from Russia revealed how his dreams 'came true' on the Ilyushin Il-96-300 aircraft - Putin's equivalent to Donald Trump's Air Force One A seriously-ill teenager has revealed what it is like inside of Vladimir Putin’s £390million luxury plane. Arslan Kaipkulov, 15, was allowed to step inside the Russian president's Ilyushin Il-96-300 - and was gifted a camera by the leader. The teenager, who is an aviation fanatic, was granted his wish personally by the Russian leader. Putin also gifted him a video camera to film on board his presidential Ilyushin Il-96-300 - when he captured sensitive images of the leader's rumoured gold-plated toilet, private wine stocks and even his double bed. However the boy was not allowed to show certain “confidential” parts of the plane’s sumptuous interior. Arslan suffers from a rare type of primary immunodeficiency disease, a disorder of the immune system. He said: "This is the top secr

When Lily Hevesh opened Twitter and saw YouTube’s Christmas video, it looked very familiar. That’s because it was her own. YouTube’s tweet doesn’t credit Hevesh at all or mention her YouTube channel. The tweet also cuts Hevesh’s intro, which acts as a welcome to her channel for those who stumble upon the video. Hevesh’s original video, uploaded to YouTube on December 23rd, has just over 60,000 views, but YouTube’s lifted version boasts more than 250,000. Hevesh, a professional domino artist, uses YouTube as, essentially, a specialized form of advertising for her work. You can see what her creations look like if you want to hire her. By stripping out the attribution to Hevesh when it brought the video to a broader audience, YouTube’s tweet â€" sent out to 71 million subscribers â€" prevents Hevesh from getting the recognition that might lead to jobs. “Very glad to see that my Christmas domino e-card is getting good use,” Hevesh tweeted on Christmas. â

Jack Black is heading to YouTube, and wants to be bigger than Ninja and PewDiePie. The comedian-turned-actor announced his arrival on the platform earlier this week. His channel, Jablinski Games, will “have games, food, and life,” according to a description underneath the video. While Black is the focus of the video, it’s his son who’s taking on the role as director and editor â€" something the comedian makes abundantly clear in a comment. “I just want to clarify that there is no production behind this,” Black wrote. “This is all my son. He’s holding me hostage and I can’t be Tracer. Help...” Black’s son being involved may help explain certain aspects of the video, including references to multiple inside jokes PewDiePie fans would understand (such as the chair Black is sitting on). It also might help explain why the aesthetic of Black’s channel seems ripped right out of 2014 â€" a peak of YouTube gaming culture. For example, Black’s banner on

A chilling Christmas greeting to the West has come from Vladimir Putin today in the form of a 2019 calendar from his burgeoning military machine. The Russian Defence Ministry view of next year begins with a snowy January view of a hulking Topol-M intercontinental mobile missile system captioned cheerfully: “Cargo delivery to anywhere in the world.” Another icy calendar greeting comes in September with a picture showing a uniformed female sniper taking aim to shoot. “Some women can blow your head away,” reads the caption. The calendar was unveiled in apparent deliberate timing as the West marks Christmas Day. For Russians 25 December is a normal working day and their main seasonal celebration comes at New Year, the moment when Grandfather Frost - as Santa is known here - brings presents to all children. This kicks off a long Russian holiday season which includes Orthodox Russian Christmas Day on 7 January. The March 2009 calendar shows the increasing number of wom

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD Breath of the Wild launched alongside the Switch last year, and it hasn’t been topped since then. No other game can match its sense of adventure as it drops you into a mysterious world and forces you to figure out how to survive. And that world is big enough that you’ll still be playing months from now. SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY One of last year’s favorites makes the list again this year. It’s impossible to play Super Mario Odyssey without a smile on your face. The iconic plumber’s latest adventure isn’t just fun and cheery, it’s downright strange, with plenty of unexpected moments that are guaranteed to make you laugh. SPLATOON 2 Do you wish you could play online shooters, but are turned off by the violence and hardcore players? Splatoon is the game for you. It’s like a candy-coated Call of Duty where you shoot globs of paint instead of bullets, and you can spend your earnings on incredibly stylish clothes. And while the game de

There was no earth-shaking warning before a wall of water rushed ashore under the cover of darkness in Indonesia on Saturday, killing more than 220 people, and injuring hundreds more. Unlike many large tsunamis, this one was not caused by an earthquake. Instead, experts think that a nearby volcanic eruption triggered an underwater landslide, which pushed the wall of water towards the shore. The tsunami hit around 9:30 PM local time, when many residents and visitors were relaxing near the beach on the islands of Java and Sumatra, on either side of the Sunda Strait, a narrow body of water that links the Indian Ocean to the Java Sea. The most likely culprit for the destruction is a volcano in the middle of the strait, Anak Krakatau. Earlier in December, the active volcano sputtered, sending ash clouds high into the atmosphere, but on Saturday it offered no obvious warning of the danger that was to come roiling off its flanks, leaving hundreds of people directly in the tsunami’s destru

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook had begun working on a feature that would encourage users of opposing political beliefs to interact in a more positive way. But the project â€" known as “Common Ground” â€" was reportedly halted after Facebook’s global head of policy raised concerns that it could lead to accusations that the site was biased against conservatives. Sources told the WSJ that the Common Ground project would have brought together several different projects “meant to minimize toxic content and encourage more civil discussion,” which included changes to how the News Feed was ranked, and to de-emphasize “hateful” comments. Kaplan â€" along with other executives â€" worried that conservative users would be disproportionately impacted by the changes, and noted that the term “‘common ground’ was patronizing.” The project was reportedly shelved over concerns that it would impact user engagement, although Facebook told the WSJ

Earlier this month, some Facebook users noticed something odd: bitcoin mining company Bitmain seemed to be posting in the comments of one of its posts, advertising some sort of “partnership” tied to bitcoin and requesting a cryptocurrency transfer. The post was suspicious; some wondered whether the company had been hacked. But the post wasn’t from Bitmain at all, the company explained in a follow-up comment on Facebook. Instead, a savvy imposter had set up a fake account, then commented on a legitimate thread from the company, attempting to draw users into sending bitcoin. “There are plenty of users creating fake accounts with our profile picture and inputting the same name as Bitmain,” the company wrote in a Facebook comment. “We always have these taken down but new ones always come out.” Users with pages like Bitmain’s rely on flagging content to Facebook and then waiting for the company to take it down. It’s not clear in this case how long the posts were visible.

Google is adding a new transit option to Maps: Lime scooters and bikes. Maps will now offer the option to direct you toward the nearest shared vehicle and factor that into your travel time. Maps already offer a similar integration for services like Uber and Lyft. Google will give you Lime as an option, along with the location and estimated price, and forward you over to the Lime app to actually find and book the scooter or bike in question. Google is rolling out the Lime integration in 13 cities around the world to start: Auckland, New Zealand; Austin, Texas; Baltimore, Maryland; Brisbane, Australia; Dallas, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Los Angeles, California; San Diego, California; Oakland, California; San Antonio, Texas; San Jose, California; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Seattle, Washington. The feature should be available on Google Maps on Android and iOS today. https://adstoppi.com/blog/google-maps-can-now-direct-you-to-lime-scooters-and-bikes More blog here

The Xbox One’s first official wireless mouse and keyboard are in the works, and Razer is clearly teasing what the two products will look like â€" and when we’ll get to learn more. The full reveal image was actually released late last month, but it seems to have mostly flown under the radar. Now the company is prominently advertising the pair as it promotes their announcement, which coincides with the first day of CES: January 8th. We’ve known for half a year that Razer had partnered with Microsoft on mouse and keyboard support for Xbox One, and it could have major implications for future titles. Xbox One players have been asking for mouse and keyboard support for a long time â€" the console was released in November 2013, and the feature only arrived last month â€" but Microsoft had long resisted because some fans feared precise mouse movement might give players an unfair advantage. We’re still wondering why Microsoft changed its mind so late in the game. Perh

There are plenty of predictions about how cannabis farming is poised to go corporate, but Big Marijuana is not inevitable, says Ryan Stoa, a professor of law at Concordia University. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. But Stoa, the author of Craft Weed: Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana Industry, argues that in a world where cannabis is legal, there is a route for cannabis agriculture to stay sustainable and local. The idea for Craft Weed began when Stoa started hearing about water conflict in Northern California, specifically around marijuana agriculture. Before, the state government had been going after marijuana growers just for growing. But now, they are targeting them for issues related to water rights. “Cannabis, as an industry, is evolving so quickly,” says Stoa, “How do you manage a water rights system when the users are in this legal gray area?” Once he started looking into these issues, Stoa found that marijuana farming is largely unregulated, whi

PewDiePie fans hacked the Wall Street Journal earlier today, claiming to offer an apology on behalf of the paper in an apparent attempt to get back at one of the YouTube creator’s longstanding opponents. A sponsored post on the Journal’s affiliated site was edited to say that the publication would “like to apologize to pewdiepie” and that he had been “misrepresented” by the paper’s journalists. The hacked note also said that the Journal would be sponsoring PewDiePie in an attempt to beat a rival channel in a race over subscribers. A Wall Street Journal representative told The Verge they’re aware of the issue and have launched a full investigation. “The page was owned by WSJ. Custom Solutions, a unit of the advertising arm, which is not affiliated with The Wall Street Journal newsroom,” the representative said. The Wall Street Journal quickly took down the defaced page, but it’s still available to read via The Internet Archive. PewDiePie fans have considere

E-cigarette users’ pee contains more heavy metals as well as signs of exposure to carcinogens and other irritating chemicals than the pee of non-vapers, hinting that the habit might come with serious health risks. At the same time, vapers who switched completely from cigarettes still had lower levels of these substances in their urine than their smoking peers, new research says. The study, published today in the journal JAMA Network Open, didn’t measure the risks from exposures directly â€" only the materials the participants peed out. But the findings may help with the ongoing debate about whether e-cigarettes are safer than cigarettes. After all, that’s a major selling point for the vape industry, which markets e-cigarettes as a less risky alternative. The problem is that they’re still largely unregulated, so we don’t know for certain what chemicals they contain or what those chemicals’ long-term health effects could be. It’s important to find out: about 6.7 pe

Was it the “lava walk” that helped crown Catriona Gray of the Philippines as the new Miss Universe? Just one day before Sunday’s final competition in Bangkok, Thailand, Gray won praise from model Tyra Banks, who described a video of Gray’s runway walk during a preliminary competition as “Pinoy Power to the Max!!!” On Sunday, Gray, 24, bested contestants from 93 other countries to capture the Miss Universe crown. The first runner-up was Tamaryn Green of South Africa and the third-place finisher was Sthefany Gutierrez of Venezuela. Gray succeeds last year’s winner, Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters of South Africa. The theme of the 67th Miss Universe pageant was "Empowered Women" and was judged by seven women including former pageant winners, businesswomen, and a fashion designer. The emcee for Sunday evening’s festivities was comedian and game show host Steve Harvey. According to website PhilStar Global, the evening contained a moment of humor when contestant

Google is launching a new feature for Android phones today through its Play Store app marketplace that will let anyone donate to a number of US nonprofits, with 100 percent of the donation going to the chosen organization. Google is waiving its traditional 30 percent fee for apps and in-app purchases as part of the program, which the company is calling Giving Season on Play. Some of the nonprofits include the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders USA, Girls Who Code, and UNICEF. The full list of charities can be found here. This is a notable change in policy for Google, which has avoided letting app developers process donations to nonprofits in the past, for reasons likely related to the thorny regulatory and tax issues on collecting its 30 percent fee from charitable gifts. (Most donations are tax-deductible in the US, yet having to account for 30 percent of a donation through the Play Store complicates that process.) “In celebration of the holiday giving season, we’re m

On a party-line vote, the FCC today approved a controversial measure that gives mobile phone carriers more power over text messages. The agency’s Republican leadership has pushed for the measure, which would classify text messaging as an information service. The move will give carriers leeway to stop spam texts without fear of breaking the law, Chairman Ajit Pai and his Republican colleagues have argued, and will keep robotexts from taking over phones the way robocalls have. The classification, Republican commissioners at the agency have argued, will only preserve the status quo. Chairman Pai said ahead of the vote that “the FCC should not make it easier for spammers and scammers to bombard consumers with unwanted texts” and cited support for the move from a group of attorneys general. But the move has received criticism from consumer advocates, as well as the agency’s lone Democratic commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel. While the agency’s rules previously left text messa

Taylor Swift held a concert at California’s Rose Bowl this past May that was monitored by a facial recognition system. The system’s target? Hundreds of Swift’s stalkers. Swift’s facial recognition system was built into a kiosk that displayed highlights of her rehearsals, which would secretly record onlookers’ faces. According to Rolling Stone, which spoke with a concert security expert who observed the kiosk, attendees who looked at the kiosk were immediately scanned. Afterward, the data was sent to a “command post” in Nashville, Tennessee that attempted to match hundreds of images to a database of her known stalkers. US artists haven’t previously been publicized for using facial recognition tech at their concerts. However, the legality of doing so is on the artist’s side: a concert is technically a private event, therefore event organizers can subject concert-goers to almost any kind of surveillance. The security measures taken for Swift’s event could be cons

A building on Facebook’s Menlo Park campus, which houses both Instagram and Facebook employees, has been evacuated Tuesday night after a reported bomb threat. Menlo Park police confirmed on Twitter that its bomb squad was on the scene, and was conducting a search of the building. The threat was initially called into the New York Police Department’s Crimestoppers unit, according to a local San Francisco NBC report. Authorities in Menlo Park were then alerted. The rest of Facebook’s campus was not told to evacuate at the time of this writing. Concerns about safety at tech campuses in the Bay Area have risen over the past year, especially following a shooting at YouTube’s San Bruno campus in April. It’s unclear how many people were working when the call came in, sometime in the late afternoon on the West Coast. This story is developing and will be updated as new information becomes available. https://adstoppi.com/blog/facebook-building-evacuated-after-reported-bomb-threat

Not content to end the year with just three different 6T options, OnePlus has announced a new special edition of the phone co-branded with storied automotive racing company McLaren. The OnePlus 6T McLaren edition is much like the 6T that was released earlier this fall, but it comes with more RAM, an even faster-wired charging system, and a special black-and-orange color scheme. The phone will be available starting on December 13th in North America and Western Europe for $699 / €699. It will arrive in China, India, and the Nordics at a later date. Nearly $700 is a steep price for a OnePlus phone, which is typically priced very aggressively compared to other high-end Android phones. The standard OnePlus 6T starts at $549 for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. To justify its price tag, the McLaren edition has 10GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and OnePlus’ new Warp Charge 30 wired charging. It ships in orange McLaren-branded packaging along with a special orange and black USB-C cable and

Once, studying dreams was the domain of mystics, prophets, and a certain sex-obsessed Austrian psychoanalyst. With neuroimaging techniques and better technology, dreams have become a focus of scientific research, from efforts to record dreams to studies investigating how lucid dreaming might be beneficial to mental health. Journalist Alice Robb is the author of Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey. The Verge spoke with Robb about theories of dreams, the most provocative studies, and the many questions that remain in the field. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Can you start by giving me a brief intellectual history of dreams? Before our modern scientific understanding, what were people’s theories of dreams? If you look throughout history, you see people taking dreams really seriously. Dream diaries are some of the oldest examples of literature, and dreams in the Bible are often treated as prophetic. In the late 19th and early 20th ce

By the time Avengers: Endgame comes out, there will be 22 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you’ve skipped one or two, there may be some lingering questions after watching Endgame’s first trailer. [Warning: The following contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp.] Avengers: Endgame’s trailer sets up a surprising reveal: the surviving Avengers presumed that Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, was killed when Thanos wiped out half of the universe’s life, only to have him turn up on their doorstep at the end of the trailer. Lang’s appearance â€" wildly waving his arms around and asking Captain America to let him into the makeshift Avengers headquarters â€" is to the great surprise of just about everyone. Ant-Man didn’t appear in Avengers: Infinity War, which could explain why heroes like Captain America, Black Widow, and Bruce Banner (the Hulk is also MIA) are shocked to learn that Lang survived. But Lang’s appearance won’t be sur

Nintendo has announced Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order exclusively for the Switch. The game was announced through a trailer shown off at The Game Awards, which are currently in progress; it’ll be out in 2019. Team Ninja, the studio behind Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive, and Nioh is on board as the developer, marking its first Nintendo collaboration since Metroid: Other M. It’s been a while since the last Ultimate Alliance game; the second came out in 2009 for various platforms. The series focuses on Diablo-style action RPG combat and features characters from throughout the Marvel universe. Ultimate Alliance 3 will allow for up to four-player local co-op on a single Switch system. The game has an original story that sees various Marvel superheroes team up to take on Thanos and his Black Order allies. https://adstoppi.com/blog/marvel-ultimate-alliance-3-announced-as-a-nintendo-switch-exclusive More blog here

One of the joys of being a private company â€" and the reason why Elon Musk prefers these kinds of companies â€" is that you do not have to undergo close scrutiny by, variously, the Securities and Exchange Commission, short investors, journalists, and lookie-loos. You don’t have to open your books. You don’t have to announce certain kinds of news. So even though SpaceX is an older company than Tesla, by most measures, we know less about it. What we do know tends to come from the government agencies that buy trips on SpaceX rockets: NASA, the Air Force, and the occasional unknown government agency. Launches occur in public, of course, so screw-ups are also public. SpaceX failed to land its rocket booster on Wednesday. Does it matter? Don your protective gear: I am about to speculate. Private companies don’t trade in the easily observable way that public companies do. I can’t look at a stock price and say, “Gee, the water landing this week sent the stock down 15

The Game Awards is ostensibly the equivalent of the Oscars for the video game industry, but the biggest names in interactive entertainment have never been known to turn down a good marketing opportunity. So The Game Awards have also evolved into a jam-packed news event, with new trailers, game announcements, and other surprises packed in between the night’s slate of prizes. This year was no different, and The Game Awards were home to some big announcements from Fortnite creator Epic Games, Ubisoft, and a slew of indie developers. If you weren’t able to watch it live, here’s the biggest news from the show: Read more: https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18126130/game-awards-2018-trailers-announcements-news-ps4-xbox-pc-nintendo-switch https://adstoppi.com/blog/the-13-biggest-announcements-from-the-game-awards-2018 More blog here

The first trailer for Avengers 4, officially called Avengers: Endgame has arrived, celebrating Marvel’s 10-year achievement in building its Cinematic Universe. It’s a journey through everything that’s happened over the last decade â€" from Tony Stark’s first jaunt as Iron Man to the devastating battle against Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, which was released earlier this year. Many of Earth’s mightiest heroes are still dealing with the loss of their close friends who faded into dust during Infinity War’s most climactic moment. Marvel has kept details about Avengers: Endgame under wraps since it began shooting last year, but the trailer does tease a little more of what’s to come in the heroes’ last stand against Thanos. Avengers 4 marks the final film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s current generation. It comprises 22 films, including Spider-Man: Homecoming and the upcoming Captain Marvel. Avengers 4 will reportedly be the last Marvel movie for som

YouTube’s most impactful moments of 2018 differ depending on who you ask. Most creators would probably point to Logan Paul’s controversy surrounding his time in Japan’s Aokigahara forest, a multimillion-dollar boxing match between some of YouTube’s most prolific individuals, and the seemingly never-ending battle between PewDiePie and Bollywood production company T-Series. There were also multiple breakups between adored YouTubers, the rise of Johnny Johnny Yes Papa as a phenomenon, and Shane Dawson ruling the digital space by reimagining what YouTubers could create. None of these moments appear in YouTube Rewind, the streaming service’s year-end wrap-up video, but that isn’t too surprising. YouTube Rewind is an annual look back at the trends, creators, and moments that YouTube executives and employees consider the most noteworthy. It’s a presentation of what makes YouTube unique, specifically designed to market its creators to advertisers in the hopes of securing larg