Apple aims to use only recycled materials in their products

Apple aims to use only recycled materials in their products

Apple, who already feeds 96% of its facilities with renewable energy, has a new environmental goal: one day develop all your gadgets using only recycled materials.

Cupertino's giant tech released its Environmental liability report (err,, in which they stipulate that it is part of their objective to achieve a closed supply chain, "where products are developed only with renewable resources or recycled material".

"Traditional supply chains are linear," explained Apple. "Materials are extracted, manufactured as products, and often end up in landfills after use." Apple wants to change that, and instead dismantle the old gadgets and use the material to build new products.

"We are also challenging ourselves to one day end our dependence on full extraction," Apple wrote.

Those goals are complicated, and Apple admitted not being 100% sure how to do it.

"We are really doing something we rarely do, which is announcing a goal before fully deciphering how to do it," said Apple's VP of Environment, politics, and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson to Vice News. "So we're a little nervous, but we also think it's very important, because as a sector we think it's the direction that technology should follow."
Apple has already melted the recovered aluminum from iphone 6, and reused the material to create Mac mini computers that the company uses internally. "We wanted to show that it is possible to use your own leftovers to create new products," Apple said. "We are now looking for new opportunities to expand this pilot program."

Why does the Galaxy S8 battery have hidden an anti-dogs warning?

Why does the Galaxy S8 battery have hidden an anti-dogs warning?

After the disaster that was the Galaxy Note 7, Samsung had to make their Galaxy S8 extra correct, which meant a lot of tests, especially as far as the battery is concerned. And it looks like it worked. The Galaxy S8 and S8 plus do not explode, in fact, both are quite good.

However, there is an unusual warning label attached to the non-removable battery inside the S8. It was marked by the Verge, and can be seen clearly in the image below and below, in the dismantling of the phone ifixit.

Samsung Galaxy S8 No Dogs warning label.The dog would probably enjoy chewing the battery initially, but then the irritation and burning would begin. It is a high performance battery, so there is also the possibility that it can explode or ignite in flames while chewing. There is no scenario where to chew a battery of the S8 (or any other battery, in any case) ends well for the dog.

Apparently, Samsung started to include the "no Dogs" tag in 2014. Both Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4 include it. What we don't know is why the label was added. Maybe Samsung received reports of injured dogs by chewing the phones?

The only other battery manufacturer that occasionally includes a non-dog tag is LG, as far as we know. But regardless of whether the label exists or not, unless you open your phone, you'll never see it. Hopefully the common sense between the game and no Galaxy S8 owner (or any phone) will give the battery to your dog to chew.

China and Europe in negotiations to build a lunar base

China and Europe in negotiations to build a lunar base

The Governments of the United States and China could be described as frenemies in the area of outer space policy: the degree of their collaboration involves procedures such as preventing them from shooting satellite-guided weapons.

So to advance their ambitious space exploration plans, the Government of Xi Jinping is now pleased with the European Union and the ongoing talks to add China to a project led by the European Space Agency to build a human position on the moon, the Associated Press said this week.

The project, which the ESA announced last year, would build a lunar habitat capable of harboring astronauts for long periods of time, as well as serving as a starting point for future expeditions to Mars. The director of ESA, Jan Wörner, described the habitat envisaged as a multinational and permanent "lunar town" similar to the International Space Station.

"This will be the Americans, will be the Russians, will be the Chinese, will be the Indians, the Japanese and even more countries with smaller contributions," said Wörner to euronews last year.

With China on board, getting America involved could be a difficult task. The Obama administration refused to participate in the project before China signed, and at a Senate hearing on space industry on Wednesday, companies urged the Government to adopt policies that would compete with China in outer space rather than cooperate.

In other space news, NASA's Cassini spacecraft completed Wednesday the last of its various raids planned in the atmosphere of Saturn, moving to 1.900 miles of the planet's clouds. That's as close as a spacecraft has flown to Saturn, NASA said. Cassini's mission is scheduled to end this month of September with a dive on the planet itself.

Facebook has in sight to unsafe children

Facebook has in sight to unsafe children

Facebook has been forced to defend internal research aimed at detecting when young people who use the service need a ' confidence boost '.

The 23-page document, first presented by the Australian, was prepared by Australian Facebook executives David Fernandez and Andy Sinn for an Australian bank. It is dated in 2017 and marked as "Confidential: internal only", according to Silicon angle.

Using the internal data of Facebook, he observed 6.4 million users who fell into the categories of "high school students, tertiary education students and young Australians and New Zealanders ... in the workforce."

Facebook detected any amount of feelings, including "stressed, defeated, overwhelmed, anxious, nervous, stupid, foolish, useless and a failure."

On Sunday, Facebook defended the movement. "The analysis made by an Australian researcher was intended to help vendors understand how people express themselves on Facebook," the company said in a statement. "It was never used to segment ads and was based on anonymous and aggregate data."

Facebook argues that the "premise of the article [Australian] is misleading," and that "it does not offer tools to target people according to their emotional state." However, Facebook also admits that this research did not follow the "established process to review the research we conducted."

The news comes several years after Facebook was accused of emotional manipulation when a Facebook data scientist and two university researchers altered the content of about 600.000 Facebook users to see how people could respond to negative versus positive feedback on Facebook. After a certain backlash, Facebook committed to reassessing how the research leads and outlined a new framework that encompasses internal and public work.

In the past year, Facebook has also added several suicide prevention tools to its platform, a component for which it uses artificial intelligence to identify and help people report suicide messages.

Nissan fighting drivers distracted with a armrest

Nissan fighting drivers distracted with a armrest

Don't you think you can keep your eyes off your smartphone, even when you're behind the wheel? Nissan could have a solution.

The car manufacturer showed on Tuesday the Smart Shield, a armrest on the Nissan Juke-lined with Faraday cage. "Once a mobile phone is placed in the compartment, the Nissan Signal Shield creates a ' silent zone ', which blocks all incoming and outgoing connections from the phone, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi," explained Nissan.

Invented by the physicist Michael Faraday in 1836, the Faraday cage are armored metal roofs that block the electric fields. In this case, just place your phone in the Nissan compartment and basically it will be as if the device was in airplane mode. When you reach your destination, open the compartment to see all your messages and missed calls.

Nissan said the signal shield is just a prototype, but the car manufacturer expects one day to offer a true solution to reduce driver distractions. Of course you can always trust your own willpower or desire not to die and/or kill someone as motivation to stop looking at your phone while driving. On the other hand, the sound of an unread message is sometimes difficult to pass. That's where the signal shield comes in.

Distracted driving is a huge problem. A study published last month by the analytical firm Zendrive found that "Americans use their phones almost every time they get behind the wheel," or during 88% of travel.

China is creating its own Wikipedia

China is creating its own Wikipedia

The Chinese government likes to control all aspects of information and communications that people living in China consume. Therefore, it will not be surprising that China is creating its own version of Wikipedia based on the existing Chinese encyclopedia.

It is being called the first "digital Book of All" in China and is expected to be online next year. The project was approved for the first time in 2011, but the work did not begin until recently. It will initially include more than 300.000 entries, each of which shall consist of approximately 1.000 words.

The content will be collected from the third and most up-to-date edition of the Chinese Encyclopedia, which gathers the information of more than 20.000 authors consisting of staff of university and research institutions. In total, more than 100 different disciplines are covered by the encyclopedia, and this will surely only expand once the transfer to an online resource is complete.

According to the South China Morning Post, the encyclopedia is known as "a great Wall of culture", or at least this is called by the project's editor-in-chief, Yang Muzhi. The president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Bai Chunli, said that "it would show China's latest scientific and technological advances, promote historical heritage, increase soft cultural power, and strengthen the fundamental values of socialism."

However, do not expect the content of this online encyclopedia to be close and open as what appears on Wikipedia. All content will inevitably be pre-approved, and anything in Wikipedia currently blocked by China is unlikely to appear in the Chinese alternative, at least not before being censured.

New recycling process converts plastic waste into oil

New recycling process converts plastic waste into oil

The world is facing a growing environmental problem with plastic, which is slowly filling our oceans. Only a very small percentage of plastic waste is recycled, and while a caterpillar can help in the long run, we really need a quick fix to handle the material responsibly. This solution is likely to come from a British company called Recycling Technologies (RT).

As Bloomberg reported, RT is located in Swindon in southwestern England, where it is run by director General Adrián Griffiths. He and his team of 22 people have managed to create a refinery machine called RT7000 to deal with all kinds of plastic waste. You put plastic on one end and three types of oil can be produced by the other.

The process is based on a technique similar to that used for thermal cracking. The plastic is first cleaned from any foreign object, such as dirt or food, and then heated to 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit) using "hot sand particles". This breaks the carbon bonds in the plastic and turns it into a vapor. The components that form the plastic have different boiling points, allowing the creation of the three different products.

In simpler terms, the conversion of crude oil to plastic creates very long hydrocarbons. The RT refinery causes hydrocarbons to become shorter. The oil produced is called Plaxx. In terms of production, for every 7.000 tonnes of plastic could be obtained 5.000 tons of Plaxx, with a machine located in Scotland. This is the production expected to be achieved next year.

The three types of fuel produced include a light yellow oil suitable for petrochemical companies, a candle-like wax oil ideal for the use of ship engines and a very thick brown wax oil that can be used for polishing shoes and cosmetics.

A RT7000 machine is the size of a tennis court and can be installed anywhere it is needed (transportation requires only five shipping containers). It costs about 3.8 million dollars to install it and then $647.000 additional dollars per year to make it work. However, RT ensures that each machine generates revenues of $2.2 million, suggesting that it will be paid alone in three years of operation.

With the RT7000 proven to work and be profitable, Griffiths wants to have 100 of these operating and leasing machines before 2025.