Tech giant Apple urges global supply chain to decarbonise by 2030

by Hansraj Agrawal | Oct 25, 2022 | Technology

Apple on Tuesday exhorted its global supply chain to decarbonise by 2030, as the tech giant said it will evaluate the work of its major manufacturing partners to decarbonise their Apple-related operations, and track annual progress.

Cupertino, California-headquartered Apple has been carbon neutral for its global corporate operations since 2020, and is focused on the goal to become carbon neutral across its entire global supply chain and the life cycle of every product, the company said in a newsroom post.

“Apple calls on global supply chain to decarbonise by 2030,” the post said.

The company is accelerating work with suppliers to decarbonise Apple-related production and expanding investments in clean energy and climate solutions.

Apple “will evaluate the work of its major manufacturing partners to decarbonise their Apple-related operations including running on 100 per cent renewable electricity and will track yearly progress”.

As the impacts of climate change are increasingly felt, Apple also announced new initiatives and investments aimed at helping decarbonise the global economy and promote climate solutions for communities.

These include investments in renewable energy in Europe, partnerships to support businesses transitioning to clean energy, and new support for projects that advance natural carbon removal and community-driven climate solutions.

As part of the supplier engagement, the company is partnering with its worldwide supply chain to urge accelerated action to achieve carbon neutrality for their Apple-related corporate operations.

Apple will partner with suppliers that are working with urgency and making measurable progress toward decarbonisation.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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WhatsApp is back: Services restored after 2 hours of global outage

by Hansraj Agrawal | Oct 25, 2022 | Technology

After an outage that lasted almost two hours, WhatsApp services were restored. The instant messaging platform was down for thousands of users in India and around the world.

Confirming that the services were restored, Meta in a statement said: “We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today. We’ve fixed the issue and apologise for any inconvenience.”

However, the company did not share any further details on the reasons for this outage other than some ‘technical issue’.

The service outage impacted users across phone, and website. This also meant that WhatsApp business services and WhatsApp payment services were also down for the same time. According to Downdetector website nearly 29,000 reports were flagged by users on the WhatsApp outage.

Globally WhatsApp has 2 billion users. In India the platform has over 400 million users and over 15 million users are on WhatsApp small business apps. According to Businessofapps.com, over 100 billion WhatsApp messages are sent and over two billion minutes are spent on WhatsApp voice and video calls per day (this is a 2020 data point).

According to Meta’s Q2, 2022 earning calls, one billion users are messaging with a business each week across WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. WhatsApp payment is still small in India with just about 7.43 million transactions for the month of September, with a value of Rs 631.63 crore. Compared to the total transaction of 6.78 billion across platforms like PhonePe, GooglePe, Paytm and others, with a transaction value of Rs 11.16 trillion.

Of course, such outages are not new to the platform or to the tech worlds. Rather such outages are becoming common across platforms. In 2021, Meta’s all three platforms Instagram, WhatsApp messenger and Facebook were down for six hours. This happened on October 4, 2021. The 2021 outage was due to the DNS failure issue. A DNS failure means users are unable to connect to an IP address using domain name. However, todays issue only impacted WhatsApp services and not the other Meta platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

In a similar instance, Google too had seen disruption of its services across products like YouTube, Google Photos, Maps, Drive and Duo. This was also a global outage.

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Apple rolls out macOS Ventura, iPadOS 16 update: Know new features and more

by Hansraj Agrawal | Oct 25, 2022 | Technology

Apple on Tuesday started rolling out macOS Ventura to its Mac lineup. Unveiled earlier this year at WWDC 2022, this update comes with new features including a stage manager, continuity camera and handoff for FaceTime. It is compatible with MacBook 2017 and later, MacBook Air 2018 and later, MacBook Pro 2017 and later, Mac Mini 2018 and later, iMac 2017 and later, iMac Pro 2017 and later, Mac Pro 2019 and later, and Mac Studio 2022.

Continuity camera enables users to seamlessly work across their Apple devices. It allows users to use their iPhones as a webcam. Macs would recognise and use the iPhone’s camera automatically when it is in close proximity. The update allows users to transfer a FaceTime call from one Apple device to another Apple device.

Designed to enable multi-tasking, the stage manager feature automatically organises apps and windows on the side of the screen. It would allow users to open multiple windows of different sizes in a single view and allows quick switching from one window to another. Safari browser now supports Passkeys, an easy and secure way to sign in across Apple devices including Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Shared tab groups allow users to share websites with friends and family. As seen on iOS 16, iMessage users can now delete and edit messages on macOS too. Other features include a clock app, desk view, weather app, live captions, iCloud Shared Photo Library, and more.

Along with the macOS Ventura update, Apple also launched the iPadOS 16 updates. The next generation operating system for iPad is available as a free software update for iPad (5th generation and later), iPad mini (5th generation and later), iPad Air (3rd generation and later), and all iPad Pro models.

The iPadOS 16 for iPads would get new tools in the Mail app such as schedule, recall, remind later, follow up suggestions, and more. Like macOS Ventura, Safari browser on the iPadOS 16 will also get a shared Tab Groups feature, which would allow easy collaboration by enabling a shared web browsing experience.

iCloud Shared Photo Library allows users to share photos with up to six people, who can add, delete, edit, or favourite the shared photos and videos in the library. Freeform, a collaborative app for people to brainstorm in one place with the help of layouts, is a new addition coming with iPadOS 16. It also includes features like stage manager, visual look-up, and live text

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Bumble open sources AI tool ‘private detector’ that detects nudes

by Hansraj Agrawal | Oct 25, 2022 | Technology

To combat the sending of unsolicited nudes online — known as cyber flashing — and make the internet safer place for everyone, the popular women-first dating app Bumble is open-sourcing its AI tool — Private Detector.

The new tool works by automatically blurring a potential nude image shared within a chat on Bumble. Users will be notified, and it is up to them to decide whether to view or block the image.

“Bumble’s Data Science team has written a white paper explaining the technology of Private Detector and has made an open-source version of it available on GitHub,” the company said in a blogpost.

“It is our hope that the feature will be adopted by the wider tech community as we work in tandem to make the internet a safer place,” it added.

This version of the Private Detector is released under the Apache License, so that it is available for everyone to implement as the standard for blurring lewd images as it is, or after fine tuning it with additional training samples.

To help address this more significant issue of cyberflashing, Bumble said it teamed up with legislators from across the aisle in 2019 in Texas to pass a bill that effectively made sending unsolicited lewd photos a punishable offence.

Since the passing of HB 2789 in Texas in 2019, Bumble has continued to advocate for similar laws across the US and globe successfully.

In 2022, Bumble reached another milestone in public policy by helping to pass SB 493 in Virginia and most recently SB 53 in California, adding another layer of online safety in one of the most populous states in the US.

–IANS

vc/uk

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Microsoft starts rolling out Android 12L for Surface Duo, Duo 2: Reports

by Hansraj Agrawal | Oct 25, 2022 | Technology

Microsoft has started rolling out Android 12L to the Surface Duo and Surface Duo 2, to build stronger connections between Windows 11 PC and the Duo devices.

Aligning visual languages for core system components across Windows and Android is the first step in creating a strong connection to Windows, the company said in a blogpost.

The Surface Duo feels familiar and is an integral part of the wider Windows environment thanks to its consistent iconography, colours and user interface (UI) features.

With Android 12L, users can customise their experience with colour palettes applied across the system, based on their chosen wallpaper.

The Duo will have four new wallpapers as part of the OS upgrade that match the new Windows desktop backgrounds and give customised accent colour options that bring the brightness of Windows to Android.

The 12L offers a more personalised, responsive and inclusive experience with a redesigned UI that adapts to a user’s wallpaper, feels more responsive to touch with fluid animations and comes with additional accessibility tools.

Additionally, Android 12 introduces new conversation widgets for staying in touch with your loved ones.

The update also increases accessibility, with a more open UI design, contrast enhancements and new visibility features like magnification, brightness control and colour management.

A new Privacy dashboard for 12L tracks app usage of the camera, microphone and location during the last 24 hours, the company said.

–IANS

aj/khz/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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WhatsApp outage across India, user unable to send and receive messages

by Hansraj Agrawal | Oct 25, 2022 | Technology

People around the world are reporting problems sending and receiving messages on the popular chat app WhatsApp.

According to Downdetector, which tracks outage reports, people started reporting problems around 3 a.m. EDT.

A WhatsApp spokesperson said the company is aware that some people are having trouble sending messages and is working to restore service as quickly as possible.

Meta, previously known as Facebook, bought WhatsApp in 2014. It’s wildly popular especially outside of the US, where many people use it for everyday communication.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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