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Samsung Electronics has announced that it will dramatically reduce the use of plastics in the packaging material for its products, and focus on more environmentally friendly materials.

From the first half of 2019, the packaging used currently for Samsung's products and accessories – ranging from mobile phones and tablets to home appliances – will be substituted with environmentally sustainable materials like recycled/bio-based plastics and paper.

For its mobile phone, tablet and wearables, it will replace plastic used for holder trays with pulp molds, and bags wrapping accessories with eco-friendly materials. It will also alter the phone charger design, swapping the glossy exterior with a matte finish and eliminating plastic protection films.

While it will be increasing the use of paper, it will only use fiber materials certified by global environmental organizations. By 2030, Samsung aims to use 500 thousand tons of recycled plastics and collect 7.5 million tons of discarded products.

"Samsung Electronics is stepping up in addressing society's environmental issues such as resource depletion and plastic wastes," said Gyeong-bin Jeon, head of Samsung's Global Customer Satisfaction Center.

The Secretary of State for Health of the United Kingdom has warned that legislation will be forthcoming to take action against social media firms over suicide-related material.

Matt Hancock was speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show when he made the comments. "If we think they need to do things they are refusing to do, then we can and we must legislate," he said. Hancock went on to stress that it's not where the UK government would like to end up.

The issue has come to national attention in the UK over the tragic details surrounding the death of a 14-year-old girl in 2017. The young lady was found dead in November 2017 after taking her own life. She reportedly had not shown any previous signs of mental health issues.

Her family later realized that she had been viewing disturbing content related to suicide on social media platforms, including Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram has since commented on the case, pointing out its policies on material that encourage or glorify self-harm or suicide.

Social media platforms do allow some content that contains suicide, self-harm, depression, anxiety and similar subject matter to reside on the platform after being advised by expert groups that the sharing of stories and making connections with others who are struggling can be helpful.

People are moving away from SMS to internet based messaging systems on their phones. Whether it is iMessage, Skype, or the world's most popular messaging platform WhatsApp, it certainly is cheaper than SMS.

Like with SMS, however, you might occasionally come across numbers and people that you would like to block. This is possible in WhatsApp just like it is in SMS.

In this guide, we'll walk you through how to block people on WhatsApp.

Blocking obviously can't send you messages but the target is also blocked from seeing your "status" or "last seen" information. Neither is he or she going to see changes that you make to your profile, and the same goes for you with regards to the blocked person's profile.

How to block WhatsApp contacts

1. Open WhatsApp


2. From the Chats view select a chat with the person you want to block or use Search (magnifying glass) on the top right


3. Press Menu (three dots) on the top right


4. Select Block (might be behind More)

Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone brand, has gone through all kinds of transformations in the 2000s, but it is making a comeback in North America with the newest Android iteration.

Nowadays Nokia's smartphone brand is developed by HMD Global, a small company located in Nokia's former office building. They develop Android phones, and good ones at that.

Now HMD Global has partnered up with three different U.S. and Canadian carriers to bring upcoming Nokia phones to the American market.

Out of the three the most significant is Verizon, which will bring its first new Nokia Android phone available starting at the end of January. Nokia 2 V is a budget smartphone with 2 day battery life, but other details are still sparse.

Furthermore HMD Global is bringing Nokia 3.1 Plus, an affordable lower tier device with a large six inch display, to Cricket Wireless. This one will be priced at $159.99 and will be available January 25 on Cricket Wireless stores and online.

The company will also announce another product for Canadian carrier Rogers Communications in the upcoming weeks.

There's no word whether the already released higher tier devices, such as Nokia 7.1, will find their way to North America, but we are expecting at least some of the upcoming high-end releases in the U.S. and Canada.

Artificial Intelligence is touted as the future liberator of people or the ultimate oppressor of humanity. Likely the reality will be, at least for the longest time, somewhere in the middle, but each year we hear about new impressive achievements of AI.

We've seen amazing efforts especially from Google's DeepMind, a AI company the search giant bought in 2014. DeepMind's AI has won not only against the chess masters, and Go professionals, now it has taken over esports.

DeepMind has challenged professional gamers to StarCraft II matches, and managed to bet the players. Not only did it beat professional players, it managed to beat them nearly every time.

Only one out of eleven matches ended in the human players victory.

The success in StarCraft is determined by both the decisions you make but also how quickly you can execute the actions, often measured in action per minute (APM).

One would think the computer would performs the actions much faster, but it was in fact the better decisions that made AlphaStar win. The APM figures for professional gamers where around 559, while AlphaStar's were only 277.

We've known for years that Google is developing a new operating system behind the scenes. Now Google has hired new talent from no other than Apple to lead the effort.

The operating system, developed under the name Project Fuchsia, might be replacing Google's mobile operating system Android in the future. According to earlier reports, over 100 engineers are already working on Fuchsia and it might come to smartphones as early as in the next five years.

Obviously 100 engineers isn't massive in the scale that is Google, so if Fuchsia is ever going to be able to replace Android, it needs new recruitment both from inside the company and out.

One of the most recent hirings is Bill Stevenson, who has worked for Apple nearly 15 years and ended his career in Cupertino as the Mac and Windows Program Management Senior Manager.

He revealed in social media that he'll be joining Google to help bring Fuchsia to the market.

Fuchsia is expected to be first implemented in IoT devices where Android isn't a staple like in mobile devices. Officially Google hasn't revealed any release information.

Netflix has become the Kleenex of streaming services, its rise to world domination has been swift and its recognized as the leading video streaming service all around the world.

Well, except in Finland.

You might know Finland as the country that doesn't exist, or the birth place of AfterDawn, but it happens to also be the one country that doesn't, yet, bow entirely to Netflix.

AudienceProject has gathered some interesting statistics about streaming services around the world. According to their data Netflix has managed to get themselves the top spot in each country surveyed, except for that one Nordic blind spot.

The top spot in Finland is taken by Yle Areena, a streaming service provided by the taxpayer and the national broadcasting company Yle. Public broadcasters' services do well all around but only in Finland is it able to beat Netflix.

56% of surveyed Finns watch Netflix weekly, compared to 57% in Germany, 67% in Denmark, 70% in Sweden, 70% in UK, 76% in Norway, and 79% in the United States. Yle Areena scored 65%.

Netflix popularity is trending upwards in all countries.

Apple has been working on self-driving cars for who knows how long now. They admitted that they're working on self-driving car tech over two years ago, but now there seems to be a setback.

According to CNBC, and confirmed by Apple, the tech giant has dismissed a significant portion of its employees from Project Titan. More than 200 employees no longer work for the secretive self-driving initiative inside Apple.

According to Apple these employees have been reassigned to other duties in other machine learning efforts that need the manpower. Even though 200 employees is indeed a substantial amount of workforce, it doesn't mean that Project Titan is dead.

Apple says they still "believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems" and that Apple can be part of it.

Recent reports have uncovered that Apple is slowing down hiring, likely due to lower than expected iPhone sales.

Project Titan is lead by Apple veteran Bob Mansfield as well as former Tesla boss Doug Field who was recruited last fall. No changes to leading positions inside Project Titan have been reported.

Google is planning major changes to its web browser, Google Chrome, later this year. Some of the more important changes have to do with how ad blocking software works within the browser.

The company, known nowadays as the leading online ad distributor, is going prohibit specific type of extensions to ensure user privacy. This, however, also affects some ad blockers, like uBlock Origin, Motherboard reports.

While the update is going to allow some, like AdBlock Plus, to still function, other filtering methods will be broken by the Chrome update.

More specifically methods like the dynamic blocking of uBlock Origin with webRequest API is no longer allowed. The proper way to do this in future Chrome versions is via declarativeNetRequest API.

Google claims that Chromium project's Manifest v3 update is part of their effort to help users with the privacy and control of their browser. It seems convenient, though, that it happens to break some of the ad blockers.

Google obviously makes bulk of its revenue via ads, which is at odds with ad blockers. Google has introduces its own ad blocking feature to Chrome in order for users to have a way to get rid of the most egregious adverts.

AfterDawn will celebrate its 20th birthday this year. As you might imagine, 20 years in Internet business means that we have changed our site's concept, services and focus quite a few times over these years. Now, it is time to shut down one of those old services.

Originally, when we launched AfterDawn back in June 1999, one of our goals was to provide information about MP3 technology, including guides on how to use it and also to support indie artists without record label contracts. To achieve this, we set up a news section, guide section and also a section for indie artists to distribute their music through our site, for free.

This royalty-free MP3 service was at the very core of AfterDawn during our first years. But very soon it became clear that the most sought-after content was about MP3 technology and guides related to it. With the arrival of the Millennium, MP3 had become a mainstream topic. To tap into this trend, we launched our own MP3 search engine that allowed users to search through various MP3 services, FTP sites and more. Very quickly, we decided to move the MP3 search engine to its own domain, and thus, MP3Lizard.com had born.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Meizu has unveiled a new flagship smartphone that is unlike anything we've seen before.

Minimalist design is obviously the thing these days, and companies everywhere are removing external fingerprint sensors, ports and buttons from their phones, but Meizu Zero has it turned up to eleven.

Meizu's new phone features a 5.99 inch OLED screen and a dual camera setup in the back, but the most striking feature is that there are no buttons and no headphone jack or speaker grills. In fact, there isn't a single hole in the phone except for a tiny pinpoint-sized hole for the microphone and another one for hard reset.

This means that the phone obviously supports wireless charging, with 18 watt energy transfer, and the sound is created by the display with what the company calls mSound 2.0 technology, unless you want to use wireless headphones. There's even no SIM tray.

Obviously having barely any holes in the design makes it very easy to make the phone waterproof, so to no surprise Meizu Zero is IP68 certified.

It's a radical move, or as Apple calls it, "brave", to not include any I/O or charging ports, rely on eSIM, and not have traditional speakers, all at the same time.

According to new report, Apple is going to no longer use LCD displays in any of its new iPhones.

Apple is said to move all its smartphones to OLED panels, which are considered to be better in many respects.

Due to Apple's decision, Japan Display, the supplier of the panels for iPhone XR and others, will have to seek a bailout from foreign investors.

According to WSJ, Japan Display is in talks with TPK Holding Co. from Taiwan and Silk Road Fund controlled by Chinese government worth as much as 30% stake in the company.

Over half of Japan Display's orders have been recently from Apple. Bad outlook for the iPhone, especially iPhone XR, just has turned into an even worse situation, as Apple seems to rely solely on OLED panels in all its future iPhones.

There's still a tiny silver lining in that Apple will still have iPads and Mac products, likely for years, that will use cheaper IPS LCD panels.

Google started the year pretty generously, at least if you ask Wikimedia. The search giant has given millions in a handout to the online encyclopedia.

The non-profit Wikimedia, most known for the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has received another $3.1 million contribution from Google, the company has announced at the World Economic Forum.

This isn't the first time Google is helping Wikimedia keep the boat afloat. Now the contributions total $7.5 million in the past decade, Wired reports.

Furthermore, Google is allowing Wikimedia to use some of its AI and machine learning tools for free, which might be invaluable.

One third of the $3.1 million will go into sustaining current operations while the rest, around $2 million, are meant for long-term viability.

Early in the game, Google tried to compete against Wikipedia with their own service, dubbed Knol, in which entries were made by hired professionals instead of the volunteers from the greater public.

Google uses Wikipedia in many of its products, so the donation isn't, of course, solely selfless.

Netflix has become a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the first Internet-based service to join the trade group.

By joining the MPAA, Netflix is now part of the same trade group as the old Hollywood guard including Disney, Paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. It is another major step for Netflix as it establishes itself as a serious producer of content rather than a service streaming only others' content.

"On behalf of the MPAA and its member companies, I am delighted to welcome Netflix as a partner," said MPAA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin.

"All of our members are committed to pushing the film and television industry forward, in both how we tell stories and how we reach audiences. Adding Netflix will allow us to even more effectively advocate for the global community of creative storytellers, and I look forward to seeing what we can all achieve together."

Ted Sarandos, Netflix Chief Content Officer, said that joining the MPAA further exemplifies its commitment to ensuring the vibrancy of creative industries and the many talented people who work in them all over the world.

"We look forward to supporting the association team and their important efforts."

Spotify's latest app allows users to mute and block artists they don't want to hear while using the music streaming service.

With its latest mobile app update, you can quite easily make sure that you won't run into music by artists you cannot stand anymore. You just have to go to that artist's Spotify page and tap on the three dots in the top right corner, then choose "Don't play this artist."

If all goes well, the app will confirm with a message stating, "Ok, we won't play music from this artist."

The block will apply to all of that artist's own music, but will not include tracks they are guest featured on as of now. Once the block is enabled, you won't hear from that artist from a library, a playlist, chart list or a radio station on the service.

Spotify had previously removed controversial artists from curated playlists but backtracked on the decision after backlash from record companies and artists. It would appear Spotify would rather leave blocking up to users to do themselves if they wish!

Source: www.thurrott.com