Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK has earned what’s considered by over 1000 British businesses and FTSE 100 companies to be the emissions-reversal gold-certification badge.

Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK – the British subsidiary of Sumitomo (SHI) Demag Plastics Machinery – has offset 153.81 tonnes of CO₂e emissions through the Woodland Fund portfolio of certified nature-based carbon reduction projects.

To achieve this certification, every day-to-day activity, from car journeys, flights, trains, taxi, hotel stays, recycling, waste, building electricity and gas consumption figures was measured and reported. Quantifying these carbon compounds caused by Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK has provided the subsidiary with a benchmark to support ongoing emission-reduction improvements.

Compared against businesses of a similar size and headcount, 153.81 tonnes of CO₂e falls within the lowest quartile, says senior environmental consultant at Carbon Neutral Britain, Caspar Eccles-Williams.

“It provides a good baseline and is testament to the efforts already taken by the Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK team to reduce emissions. We liken it to a sprint within a marathon. This 2023 audit has helped to identify hotspots where further incremental improvements can be made.”

The company intentionally selected Carbon Neutral Britain as it follows the ISO 14064 and GHG Emissions Protocol Accounting Standards.

Operations manager Andy Hannan said: “The Woodland Fund backs legitimate projects where carbon credits are measured, regulated, verified and audited.”

All of the carbon offsetting projects are authenticated to the highest standards by the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), Gold Standard Voluntary Emission Reductions (VER), and the United Nations Certified Emission Reductions (CER) programmes. To counterbalance the global inequalities in CO₂e emissions, Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK’s offsets are funding four international Woodland Fund projects closely aligned to their business principles. They include energy reduction, socio-economic and environmental education, reforestation, and biodiversity.

Managing director Nigel Flowers adds: “Our efforts won’t stop at this certification. Belonging to one of the world’s leading supplier of energy-efficient moulding machines, we’ll be accelerating our focus on sustainability both internally and with our customers in 2023 and beyond.”

Cyberpunk 2077’s developer has apologized for dialog and graffiti inserted in the Ukrainian version of the 2.0 update that’s critical of Russia’s invasion of the country, PC Gamer has reported. CD Projekt Red said it had nothing to do with the changes and promised to remove them.

“The Ukrainian localization of Cyberpunk 2077 contains several remarks that could offend some Russian players,” the studio said in a (Google translated) statement. “These remarks were not written by CD Projekt Red employees and do not represent our views. We are working to fix them and replace them in the next update. We apologize for this situation and are taking steps to ensure it does not happen again.”

As originally reported by Zone of Games (via a Rock Paper Shotgun report) some dialog makes reference to Ukrainian resistance slogans. Elsewhere, graffiti suggests Crimea is still part of Ukraine in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe, following Russia’s 2014 invasion. Other messages refer to citizen missile detection, COVID initiatives under President Zelensky, derogatory terms for Russians and more.

The Ukrainian localization was reportedly handled by the Ukrainian company SBT Localization, which also worked on Baldur’s Gate 3, Darkest Dungeon and other titles. The changes were noticed by Russian and Ukrainian players, with multiple complaints registered on Steam and CD Projekt Red forums.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, deemed unlawful by a majority of nations, has had a deleterious effect on Ukraine’s game industry. Developer GSC Game World was forced to halt work on Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl after the aggressions forced it to relocate staff to Prague in order to help employees and their families “survive” the conflict, it said. Earlier this year, Ukraine sent letters to Sony, Microsoft and Valve, urging them to block the title Atomic Heart from their gaming platforms over concerns about Russian connections.

Following the likes of Lenovo, Asus, and most recently HP, LG has announced a new laptop built around a single large foldable display. The device is called the LG Gram Fold, and it’ll be available to buy online in South Korea for 4.99 million won (around $3,697) from October 4th. An international release is yet to be announced.

Like previous foldable laptops, the LG Gram Fold can be used in a variety of different orientations. If you’re after a traditional laptop experience you can fold it upright and place a Bluetooth keyboard on its lower half to use the remaining part of its screen like a 12-inch laptop with a 3:2 aspect ratio. Or, if you ditch the physical keyboard, you can type on a virtual keyboard on the screen itself. Flattening the laptop fully lets you use it like a tablet, or you can add a keyboard to use it like a computer with a 17-inch screen. There’s also a book mode that’s designed for you to half-fold the laptop and hold it in your hands in landscape.

The display itself has a resolution of 1920 x 2560, with a peak brightness of 500 nits. In a separate press release announcing mass production of the panel itself, LG Display notes that the screen features a “specialized material” on the folding area of the screen to minimize creasing. LG says the Gram Fold is rated to survive 30,000 folding cycles. That might sound low compared to the 200,000 or even 400,000 that some folding phones are rated for, but the idea is that you typically fold and unfold a laptop less over the course of a day so the lower number of folds shouldn’t translate to a much lower lifespan.

Away from the main attraction of its folding screen, the LG Gram Fold’s specs are more modest. It’s powered by an Intel i5-1335U CPU with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 72Wh battery. It weighs in at 1250 grams, and is 19.9mm thick when folded and 9.4mm thick when unfolded. The Windows 11 machine comes with a pair of USB-C ports, one Thunderbolt 4 compatible, and the other USB 3.2 Gen 2×1. The LG Gram Fold is also stylus compatible, but LG is selling those separately.

With LG Display proudly boasting about mass producing these kinds of foldable displays, and competitors Samsung Display and BOE making foldable panels of their own, it seems likely LG won’t be the last laptop manufacturer to announce a device like this. Now we just need to hope for future models that don’t cost multiple thousands of dollars.

CD Projekt Red has disabled mods for the launch of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.

The highly anticipated release of Cyberpunk 2077‘s one and only expansion is officially here, introducing a brand new questline, district, cast of characters, and more. 

The growth in online shopping over the last 20 years has brought a new problem: package thieves. Even though stealing mail can come with federal charges and land you in jail for five years, up to 210 million packages were stolen in 2021. How can you prevent your Amazon deliveries from being swiped from your porch while you watch helplessly from work on your Ring Video doorbell? The answer is Amazon Hub.

What is Amazon Hub?

Amazon Hub is a partnership between Amazon and local businesses to provide a free and secure location to deliver your packages. Hub comes in two flavors depending on the partnership: Amazon Hub Locker and Amazon Hub Counter. Let’s break down the differences between the two services.

Amazon Hub Locker

Amazon Hub Lockers are a cross between a self-service kiosk and the wall of lockers at a gym. They’re usually branded in Amazon blue or yellow, but gray is also common. There are two types of lockers, depending on whether they have screens or not. Lockers with screens are embedded with a touchscreen display, a barcode scanner, a number pad, and a headphone jack for people with a vision impairment or low vision.

There are two ways to retrieve your package from lockers with screens. The first is with a six-digit code sent to your email confirming the delivery of your package. Enter the pickup code using the touchscreen on the locker. The locker door opens, and you can grab your stuff. The other way is with a barcode included in the confirmation email. Direct the barcode to the scanner located beneath the touchscreen of the locker. It automatically scans it and opens the locker door.

Lockers without screens use Bluetooth technology, so turn on Location and Bluetooth on your smartphone to allow a connection. Next, open the delivery confirmation email you received and select Start Pickup. Alternatively, launch the Amazon app, and go to Your Orders > Track Package > Start Pickup to connect your phone to the locker. Then, select Open Locker to open the locker slot and take out your package.

Amazon Hub Apartment Locker

You may be familiar with this concept if you live in an apartment complex. Amazon Hub Apartment Lockers work similarly to the lockers you find in gas stations and grocery stores. Get a pickup code, use it at the locker, and get your package. The difference is that the in-store Amazon Lockers are exclusively for Amazon deliveries, whereas the Apartment Lockers can be used for any package delivered by your mail carrier and accessed at any hour, not only when the business is open.

Be aware that not only mail carriers have access. If you wait too long to get your package, don’t be surprised if your property manager moves it to the office to make room for more proactive residents.

Amazon Hub Counter — Like a Hub Locker but with a human

Amazon Hub Counter provides the same basic service as Amazon Hub Locker but with an intermediary. Instead of your packages being sequestered in a wall of digital lockers, it’s kept by an Amazon business partner. You show your email with the barcode to the employee holding your package, the representative scans it, and then hands it over. You don’t have to pick it up yourself. You can forward your email to a friend or family member, and they can pick it up in your place. No ID is needed.

Both services hold your packages for a few days, after which your package is returned to Amazon, and you’ll be reimbursed. Amazon Hub Locker holds packages for three days, while Amazon Hub Counter holds packages for seven days.

There are a few restrictions for Amazon Hub Locker and Amazon Hub Counter, which can be found online. However, if Amazon fulfills your order, and you don’t order something over 12 cubic feet, weighs over 30 pounds, or is worth more than $5,000, your item should be eligible for either Amazon Hub Locker or Amazon Hub Counter.

You can also use Amazon Hub Lockers to return orders

Amazon Hub makes returning items easier. When returning something to Amazon, you can drop off eligible items at a locker or counter location. If you choose a locker drop-off, you’re sent a code that you enter on the locker touch display. If you choose a counter drop-off, you’re sent a QR code that the store employee scans before taking your package.

Something to note about using Amazon Hub Locker to return items is that there may not be space in the locker for your item. Also, the code Amazon sent you is good at that location for 30 days. After that, you must initiate a new return request.

How to start using Amazon Hub

If you’re in the US and you want to get started with Amazon Hub, follow these steps:

1. Go to this page and enter the area where you’d like to pick up your deliveries.

2. When you find a location or two that work for you, click the Add to address book button. Alternatively, go to your address book and click Add Address.

   

3. On the Add a new address page, instead of entering an address, click Or find an Amazon pickup location near you.

   

4. Select a nearby locker or counter location to add to your delivery addresses.

Amazon Hub Locker is available in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Japan, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. Amazon Hub Counter is available in the US, Mexico, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Check the Hub homepage to find out if there’s one near you. When you have a locker or counter location in your address book, select that as your delivery address when you finish your order.

Getting someone to pick up your package at an Amazon Locker

If you can’t pick up your package, you can have a friend or family member get it for you. Forward them the delivery confirmation email, where they’ll find the six-digit pickup code or barcode for lockers with screens and the Start Pickup button for those without. For lockers without screens, they must turn on Location and Bluetooth and need the latest version of the Amazon App.

Never leave the house again (unless you want to)

Amazon isn’t perfect, but it makes life easier. Amazon Prime offers a lot of benefits and saves you money if you plan a day or so ahead. The membership is a bit pricey, but Amazon offers discounted memberships for students and people who receive EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) and other forms of government assistance.

Take a quick glance at your Apple Watch — what does the weather complication say? It’s supposed to give you a quick idea of what’s going on in the great outside, with a temperature and a small indication as to the relative precipitation.

At the moment, however, forum users on Apple’s Support Community, MacRumors, and 9to5 Mac are reporting that the complication isn’t working. Instead of the expected temperature readout and weather indicator, the complication appears completely blank, of no use to anyone.

Getty Images announced its own text-to-image generative AI tool on Monday, insisting it is “commercially safe” as it’s been trained exclusively on Getty’s own stock photo platform.

Dubbed “Generative AI by Getty Images” the service uses Nvidia’s Edify model to generate images, videos or 3D graphics. Edify is part of Nvidia’s Picasso platform, which hosts a range of generative AI models on its cloud service.

Unlike other commercial text-to-image tools, Getty’s model is not trained on third-party images scraped from the internet. It was only fed data that the stock photo provider owns – meaning any pictures generated by the software shouldn’t violate any copyright laws.

“We’ve listened to customers about the swift growth of generative AI – and have heard both excitement and hesitation – and tried to be intentional around how we developed our own tool,” said Grant Farhall, chief product officer at Getty.

“We’ve created a service that allows brands and marketers to safely embrace AI and stretch their creative possibilities, while compensating creators for inclusion of their visuals in the underlying training sets.”

The service’s output can be used under Getty Images’ standard license. Users will pay a one-off fee to Getty for licensing the AI-generated image, but cannot license it to third parties or receive royalty payments on machine-made works.

“Similar to when customers license content from Getty Images’ pre-shot library, they do not own the file [or] image itself, but Getty Images grants customers a license to use the content,” a Getty spokesperson told The Register. “As such, customers are not able to further license generated content to additional parties, nor receive their own royalties as part of their agreement.”

Fees will vary depending on the number of times a customer runs the model to generate their desired image. Given an input description, or prompt, they will see four different variations of images generated by the software.

“As customers commit to higher volumes of prompts, they will achieve savings on a per prompt basis. Customers will also be able to download a licensed version of any visual they generate, for no extra charge,” Getty’s spokesperson told us.

The image library said it will not add people’s custom AI-generated images to its own database, but will retain the content as well as the input descriptions, or prompts, used to create it, to train its model.

“Your prompts, generated images, and feedback will all be used in retraining our model to become more effective for you, our customer. By allowing our model to learn and improve through retraining, we can provide you with an improved experience such as better understanding the intent of your prompt or reducing deformations in generated content,” the image org confirmed in an FAQ.

A content filter analyzing input prompts will block users from attempting to generate inappropriate or lewd content, the picture biz said. Getty believes that the model should be safer to use in such situations than other commercial tools on the market, in part thanks to its previous curation efforts for the library used to train its AI.

Last year, Getty banned people from uploading AI-generated artwork onto its platforms because it didn’t want to host images that could potentially infringe intellectual property rights. The biz has also sued Stability AI, a London-based startup, for scraping its images without consent. The scraped images were used to train Stability’s own text-to-image tools.

Getty is not the first to make a pitch at the legally safe AI market. Earlier this month Microsoft announced it would cover any copyright cases filed over the generation of software by CoPilot – for paying customers, at least. ®

How much do you pay for a gigabyte of mobile data? Analysis of over 5,000 mobile data plans in 237 countries by comparison site Cable.co.uk compares the cost of 1GB of mobile data across the globe.

Israel is the cheapest with 1GB of data on the move costing a mere two cents. Italy is second-cheapest, with 1GB costing $0.085 on average. The US, however, ranks only 219th in the world, with an average 1GB cost of $6.00. The UK is 58th with 1GB costing on average $0.62.

Best switch off your phone in Zimbabwe, where the average cost of 1GB is $43.75 — more than two thousand times more expensive than 1GB in chart-topper Israel. In fact five of the 10 most expensive countries to buy mobile data are in sub-Saharan Africa. Island nations in Oceania and the Caribbean also tend to be among the more expensive places in the world.

Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, says:

Our yearly mobile data pricing tracking study is as much a measure of the quantity of data offered as it is the price of data more broadly. After all, those countries with the most improved (cheaper) pricing across the five years our tracker now covers tend to be those offering tens or even hundreds of times more data in 2023 as was available for similar money in 2019.

It’s encouraging to see the price of data coming down across the globe as whole, with the vast majority of countries offering 1GB of mobile data for less than $2.00. It’s a very different picture to the one we saw in 2019.

You can see an interactive map of countries on the Cable.co.uk site.

Photo credit: ra2studio/ Shutterstock

Earlier today, Samsung announced that it has developed a new memory module standard that could show up on Intel’s platforms as early as next year. In an industry-first, the South Korean giant has developed a Low Power Compression Attached Memory Module (LPCAMM). Samsung claims that this new memory can be more power efficient while offering better performance compared to the current offerings.

Currently, manufacturers have the option of using two types of memory modules- Low-Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR) DRAM or Small outline Dual In-line Memory Module (So-DIMM). LPDDR is compact but is attached to the motherboard, making it ideal for smaller devices like mobiles and smartwatches. So-DIMM, on the other hand, is bigger but is removable, making it great for reparability.

Samsung is not the first company to go out of its way to develop a new memory design. Last year, Dell announced that it had developed Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) which addressed a lot of So-DIMM’s shortcomings.

Samsung claims that LPCAMM infuses So-DIMM’s reparability with LPDDR’s compactness, making it a great alternative for all kinds of devices, including smartphones and laptops. Samsung notes that LPCAMM takes up to 60% less space while improving the performance and power efficiency by up to 50% and 70% respectively. This, combined with the fact that LPCAMM is detachable, makes it a great option for all types of hardware.

Samsung’s LPCAMM is built on DDR5 spec and will come with Serial Presence Detect (SPD) hub which offers additional features and manages external controller access while taking a memory load off the internal bus. LPCAMM will also feature Power Management Integrate Circuits (PMIC) which will help manage power distribution to the various components like DRAM register and SPD hub.

Dr. Dimitrios Ziakas, Vice President of Memory & IO Technology at Intel said:

The energy efficiency and repairability advantages of LPCAMM make this new form factor a game changer in today’s PC market. We’re excited to be a part of the new standard enabling the client PC ecosystem and pave the path for future adoption and innovation in broader market segments.

Samsung is branding the new module as the perfect replacement for all kinds of hardware. However, the company recognizes the challenges of upgrading to a new standard on a larger scale like for a server. As such, the company wants to create “significant potential for it to become the solution of choice for future data centers and servers.”

Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics said:

With the growing demand in innovative memory solutions encompassing high performance, low power consumption and manufacturing flexibility across various fields, LPCAMM is expected to gain wide adoption in PCs, laptops and data centers. Samsung is committed to actively pursuing opportunities to expand the LPCAMM solution market and collaborating closely with the industry to explore new applications for its use.

Samsung plans to test the new LPCAMM modules with new hardware and major customers this year, with the company planning to introduce it to consumers in 2024.