ICT news

• Supermarket Plastic Bag Charge Has Led To 98% Drop in Use in England, Data Shows

  02-08-2023 23:20 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Environmental campaigners have called on the government to learn from its own successes after official figures showed the use of single-use supermarket plastic bags had fallen 98% since retailers in England began charging for them in 2015. From a report: Annual distribution of plastic carrier bags by seven leading grocery chains plummeted from 7.6bn in 2014 to 133m last year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said on Monday. Rebecca Pow, the minister for environmenta
  
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• Google's AI Search is Getting More Video and Better Links

  02-08-2023 22:41 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience is getting a big new feature: images and video. From a report: If you've enabled the AI-based SGE feature in Search Labs, you'll now start to see more multimedia in the colorful summary box at the top of your search results. Google's also working on making that summary box appear faster and adding more context to the links it puts in the box. SGE may still be in the "experiment" phase, but it's very clearly the future of Google Search.
  "It really
  
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• Bulb Becomes a Flashpoint as the Sun Sets on Incandescent Lights

  02-08-2023 22:00 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  A ban on most kinds of traditional bulbs renews a cultural squabble between regulatory efforts to curb energy consumption and the very American impulse to do whatever one wants in one's domicile. The New York Times: The switchboard at Lightbulbs.com, a (pretty self-explanatory) e-commerce website, lit up with panicked callers on Tuesday, who all wanted to know if the news was true. Had the government just banned the sale of incandescent bulbs? Yes, mostly. Was this decision part of an elaborate
  
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• Beijing Reports Heaviest Rain in 140 Years

  02-08-2023 21:20 via science.slashdot.org
  
  Rains that pummelled Beijing in recent days were the heaviest since records began 140 years ago, the city's weather service has said, as China faced accusations that it had undermined key climate talks with other countries. From a report: Storm Doksuri, a former super typhoon, swept northwards over China after hitting southern Fujian province last week, following its battering of the Philippines. The average rainfall for the entire month of July was dumped on Beijing in just 40 hours, with heavy
  
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• Airbus Forms Joint Venture in Bid To Replace International Space Station

  02-08-2023 20:40 via slashdot.org
  
  Airbus is forming a joint venture with US start-up Voyager to compete to build a replacement for the International Space Station, an internationally funded laboratory in space that is due to be decommissioned by the end of the decade. From a report: The deal announced on Wednesday formalises the partnership unveiled in January on Voyager's Starlab project and will see Airbus replace US defence company Lockheed Martin as its main industrial partner. Starlab is one of the frontrunners in a race la
  
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• Worldcoin Says Will Allow Companies, Governments To Use Its ID System

  02-08-2023 20:00 via yro.slashdot.org
  
  Worldcoin will expand its operations to sign up more users globally and aims to allow other organisations to use its iris-scanning and identity-verifying technology, a senior manager for the company behind the project told Reuters. From the report: "We are on this mission of building the biggest financial and identity community that we can," said Ricardo Macieira, general manager for Europe at Tools For Humanity, the San Francisco and Berlin-based company behind the project.
  Macieira said Worldc
  
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• Australian Senate Committee Recommends Government Ban on TikTok Be Extended To WeChat

  02-08-2023 19:20 via slashdot.org
  
  An Australian Senate committee has recommended a ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from federal government devices be extended to China's most popular social media platform, WeChat. From a report: The Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media also recommended in a report late Tuesday that social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter should become more transparent or be fined. Committee chair James Paterson said on Wednesday the report's recommendations would make
  
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• Australians Fight for the Right To Work From Home Permanently

  02-08-2023 18:40 via slashdot.org
  
  As corporate leaders call for an end to pandemic-era remote work arrangements, unions in Australia are setting a precedent and fighting back, taking to court the country's biggest bank and wrangling with the federal government to demand WFH, as it is known, to become the norm. From a report: "All the deep changes in the Australian labour market have come out of crises. When you have a jolt, you never return to the way the world was," said John Buchanan, head of the University of Sydney's Health
  
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• GameStop To Remove Crypto Wallets Citing 'Regulatory Uncertainty'

  02-08-2023 18:00 via slashdot.org
  
  Video game retailer GameStop said it will remove its support for crypto wallets citing regulatory uncertainty in the United States, just one year after rolling out the service. From a report: "Due to the regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space, GameStop has decided to remove its iOS and Chrome Extension wallets from the market on November 1, 2023," according to its website. Customers will have access until October 1. The wallets, which were rolled out just about a year ago, allow users to man
  
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• Canon Warns Printer Users To Manually Wipe Wi-Fi Settings Before Discarding

  02-08-2023 17:20 via hardware.slashdot.org
  
  Printer manufacturer Canon is warning that sensitive Wi-Fi settings don't automatically get wiped during resets, so customers should manually delete them before selling, discarding, or getting them repaired to prevent the settings from falling into the wrong hands. From a report: "Sensitive information on the Wi-Fi connection settings stored in the memories of inkjet printers (home and office/large format) may not be deleted by the usual initialization process," company officials wrote in an adv
  
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• Cult of Dead Cow Hacktivists Design Encryption System for Mobile Apps

  02-08-2023 16:40 via it.slashdot.org
  
  Once known for distributing hacking tools and shaming software companies into improving their security, a famed group of technology activists is now working to develop a system that will allow the creation of messaging and social networking apps that won't keep hold of users' personal data. From a report: The group, Cult of the Dead Cow, has developed a coding framework that can be used by app developers who are willing to embrace strong encryption and forsake revenue from advertising that is ta
  
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• China Curbs Drone Exports Over 'National Security Concerns'

  02-08-2023 15:00 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: China will place export controls on drone and drone equipment in order to "safeguard national security and interests," its commerce ministry announced Monday, in a move that could impact the war in Ukraine. The restrictions on equipment will require vendors to seek permission to export certain drone engines, lasers, imaging, communications and radar gear, and anti-drone systems. Consumer-grade drones with certain specifications are also subject to th
  
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• Walmart Is Bringing Digital Ads To An Aisle Near You

  02-08-2023 12:00 via slashdot.org
  
  According to CNBC, Walmart shoppers "will soon see more third-party ads on screens in Walmart self-checkout lanes and TV aisles; hear spots over the store's radio; and be able to sample items at demo stations." From the report: For Walmart, selling ad space to its wealth of existing partners is another way to capitalize on the company's huge reach and to expand into higher-margin businesses. The discounter has nearly 4,700 stores across the U.S., with roughly 90% of Americans living within 10 mi
  
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• Fitch Downgrades US Credit Rating From AAA To AA+

  02-08-2023 10:57 via news.slashdot.org
  
  The US government's credit rating has been downgraded following concerns over the state of the country's finances and its debt burden. From a report: Fitch, one of three major independent agencies that assess creditworthiness, cut the rating from the top level of AAA to a notch lower at AA+. Fitch said it had noted a "steady deterioration" in governance over the last 20 years. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called the downgrade "arbitrary". It was based on "outdated data" from the period 201
  
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• Space-Scanning Algorithm Spots 'Potentially Hazardous' 600-Foot Asteroid

  02-08-2023 09:00 via science.slashdot.org
  
  An asteroid-hunting algorithm called HelioLinc3D has spotted a potentially hazardous 600-foot-long space rock that's currently about 4 astronomical units from Earth. The asteroid is 2022 SF289 and "swings by Earth on the opposite side of its orbit, classifying it as a potentially hazardous asteroid (or PHA)," reports Gizmodo. From the report: "Potentially hazardous" merely means there is some chance the object could impact Earth, and thus it is worth keeping an eye on. What's significant about 2
  
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• Nvidia AI Image Generator Fits On a Floppy Disk and Takes 4 Minutes To Train

  02-08-2023 05:30 via slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Decrypt: In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI art creation tools, Nvidia researchers have introduced an innovative new text-to-image personalization method called Perfusion. But it's not a million-dollar super heavyweight model like its competitors. With a size of just 100KB and a 4-minute training time, Perfusion allows significant creative flexibility in portraying personalized concepts while maintaining their identity. Perfusion was presented in a r
  
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• Pixar, Adobe, Apple and Others Form Alliance For OpenUSD To Drive Open Standards For 3D Content

  02-08-2023 03:00 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Some of the largest tech companies, including Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and Nvidia, have announced the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD) to promote and develop Pixar's 3D Universal Scene Description technology. From the Linux Foundation: The alliance seeks to standardize the 3D ecosystem by advancing the capabilities of Open Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD). By promoting greater interoperability of 3D tools and data, the alliance will enable developers and content creators to describe, compose, an
  
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• Employers Feeling More Pain In Return-To-Work Policies

  02-08-2023 02:20 via slashdot.org
  
  Long-time Slashdot reader lpq shares a report from Fortune: We're now finding out the damaging consequences of the mandated return to office. And it's not a pretty picture. A trio of compelling reports -- the Greenhouse Candidate Experience report, the Federal Reserve's Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), and Unispace's Returning for Good report -- collectively paint a stark picture of this brewing storm. Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-offi
  
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• Facebook and Instagram's News Blackout In Canada Starts Today

  02-08-2023 01:40 via news.slashdot.org
  
  Starting today, Facebook and Instagram users in Canada will no longer be able to view or share news links or see videos and photos published by publishers and broadcasters. Engadget reports: Meta made the decision in response to Canadian legislators passing the Online News Act. The law requires certain platforms to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements with news organizations. The aim is to address the collapse in advertising revenue that news outlets have struggled with over the last two decades
  
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• Biden Reverses Trump Decision, Keeps Space Command In Colorado

  02-08-2023 01:00 via tech.slashdot.org
  
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: President Joe Biden has determined that Colorado Springs will be the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command, reversing a Trump administration decision to move the facility to Alabama, the Pentagon announced Monday. The decision will only intensify a bitter parochial battle on Capitol Hill, as members of the Colorado and Alabama delegations have spent months accusing each other of playing politics on the future of the four-star command.The
  
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• Meta Is Reportedly Planning An Abe Lincoln Chatbot As Part of a Public AI Push

  02-08-2023 00:20 via meta.slashdot.org
  
  According to the Financial Times, Meta is preparing to launch AI-enabled chatbots with unique personalities, such as a surfer personality and a chatbot based on Abraham Lincoln. Engadget reports: This is an attempt to boost engagement across Meta's social media platforms, as human-like discussions tend to be more interesting than droll robotic responses. The company hasn't announced which of these platforms would host Abe Lincoln and his pals, though previous reports indicated Instagram, Messeng
  
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