Month: January 2023

‘No chance’ of global heating below 1.5C but nuclear tech ‘promising’ in climate crisis, Bill Gates says

Billionaire and founder of Microsoft tells Sydney audience it is ‘great to have Australia on board on climate’ Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast The world will be lucky to avoid 2.5C of heating, but emerging technology may help avert even worse, Bill Gates has told a Sydney …

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Surface Pro 9 review: Microsoft’s best tablet – if you pick the right one

Faster and easier to repair, the Intel version is best yet. But the Arm model isn’t ready for prime time Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 tablet gets faster and easier to fix in the Surface Pro 9, while offering more options than ever before. But is it still the best PC tablet going? Only if you …

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‘It’s the opposite of art’: why illustrators are furious about AI

AI art generators may provide five minutes of fun for most users, but the blurring of creative and ethical boundaries is leaving many artists raging against the machine ‘Woman reading book, under a night sky, dreamy atmosphere,” I type into Deep Dream Generator’s Text 2 Dream feature. In less than a minute, an image is …

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‘Not soulless blocks of rice’: the secret world of Japan’s robot sushi chefs

Cutting-edge technology is helping food chains reach the holy grail of flawless, contactless, low-budget dining The secret behind the hi-tech future of sushi lies in an unremarkable building in the backstreets of Osaka. Inside, empty plastic cups and plates adorned with scrunched-up wet paper – to replicate the weight and texture of scallops – make …

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Back to the future: how Mastodon is restoring the lost art of online conversation | John Naughton

The new social network and its interconnected ‘fediverse’ is a welcome alternative to blustering rival Twitter and Elon Musk When Twitter first appeared in July 2006, I was enchanted by it. At one point, some geek created an app that logged tweets and geolocated them in real time on a map of the world, so …

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Rentokil pilots facial recognition system as way to exterminate rats

World’s largest pest control group has developed technology to track individual rodents and assess how best to deal with them The world’s largest pest control group is piloting the use of facial recognition software as a way to exterminate rats in people’s homes. Rentokil said it had been developing the technology alongside Vodafone for 18 …

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Elizabeth Holmes tried to ‘flee’ US with one-way Mexico ticket, prosecutors say

New court filing says ex-Theranos founder booked flight departing 26 January last year, shortly after fraud conviction The disgraced founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, made an “attempt to flee the country” by purchasing a one-way ticket to Mexico after she was found guilty on four counts of fraud last January, according to prosecutors. In the …

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What are we worrying about when we worry about TikTok? | Samantha Floreani

Sensationalist headlines and reactionary calls for stricter moderation risk missing the forest for the trees Is there any platform that creates as much collective angst as TikTok? For some, TikTok is just a silly video app. For others, it’s a symbol of our most potent social and political fears. What are young people engaging with? …

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First industrial action at Amazon UK hopes to strike at firm’s union hostility

In Coventry, 300 GMB members plan to down tools over long hours, bad management and a 50p-an-hour pay rise Amazon workers at a vast depot in Coventry will stage a historic strike on Wednesday – the first time the delivery giant’s UK operations have ever been hit by industrial action. The immediate cause of the …

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