computers

12 Jul 2026

Slashdot

Facial Recognition in UK Shops Will Soon Instantly Alert Police About Offenders

Facial recognition technology in U.K. shops "will soon alert police in real time to the presence of serious offenders," reports The Guardian, "with civil liberties groups warning of a 'dangerous escalation' towards surveillance and criminalisation in the retail sector." Facewatch, a facial recognition system used by more than 100 businesses including Sainsbury's, B&M and Spar to monitor thieves, said it was launching a UK-first feature to "alert police instantly when the most serious offenders trigger a live facial recognition match". Facewatch's chief executive, Nick Fisher, said the "unique technical development" would be launched in autumn and would warn police in an average of four seconds when the "worst offenders" were flagged on its network... Charlie Whelton, the policy and campaigns officer at [civil liberties nonprofit] Liberty, said it was concerned about this "untested, opaque development" and the way facial recognition technology had been allowed to "proliferate without anything to govern it". "It's not against the law to walk into a shop even if you've committed crimes in the past," he said. "The idea of calling the police on somebody who hasn't committed a crime, but there's a concern they might, is really upending the way we do things. And of course, it's not infallible. These systems do make mistakes, and it's very hard to argue with that when it happens to you." A number of people have been forced to leave shops after being falsely identified by Facewatch technology as a shoplifter, with some describing it as "Orwellian" and saying they felt as though they were "guilty until proven innocent"... The use of the Facewatch technology looks set to quickly expand, with Sainsbury's recently announcing plans to increase its use from 55 stores to more than 200 by the end of the year. Facewatch said it alerted retailers almost 300,000 times that a "known repeat offender" had entered a store during the first six months of 2026, and that its system allowed staff to intervene "before theft, abuse or violence could occur or escalate"... [E]xperts argue the use of facial recognition technology in shops to catch shoplifters is disproportionate. Nuala Polo, the UK public policy lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute, which studies the impact of AI on society, said: "There are other, much less intrusive means that you can use to catch shoplifters where you don't need to be scanning millions of faces every day, virtually without consent...." The campaign group Big Brother Watch has criticised police for "inserting themselves into this cowboy operation" and said people would be matched against "a secret blacklist compiled by unaccountable businesses and private security guards".

10 Million Cubans Suffer Nationwide Blackout - For The Second Time This Week

The Associated Press reports: An islandwide blackout struck Cuba on Friday for the second time this week as the nation of nearly 10 million people grapples with a crumbling power grid and fuel shortages stemming from a U.S. energy blockade... Authorities reported that they have already begun restoring power to some areas. On Monday, another massive blackout affected nearly 10 million people nationwide. Authorities reported during the week that service was gradually being restored from that outage. "While total blackouts have become increasingly common in the Caribbean country, it's unusual for back-to-back ones to hit just days apart..."

Meta Removes Controversial AI Feature On Instagram After Backlash

"Meta has axed a controversial feature that allowed users to modify photos from public Instagram accounts using AI," reports TechCrunch: The feature, which wasn't designed to alert a user if their photos were used in this way, prompted immediate backlash... The company issued a blog post Friday announcing that it was removing the feature. Puck News founding partner Dylan Byers was the first to share the company's decision... Byers notes that the decision to do away with the feature came "amid scrutiny from users and talent agencies, including CAA."

11 Jul 2026

Ars Technica

A Jupiter-size planet that escaped its star's death

It's unclear how the planet avoided its star's bloated red giant stage.

11 Jul 2026 12:00pm GMT

Overhaul of public lands grazing regulations seeks to cut public involvement

For the first time since 1995, the Bureau of Land Management is rewriting its grazing regulations.

11 Jul 2026 11:11am GMT

10 Jul 2026

Ars Technica

Quantum error correction can constantly recalibrate a processor

Reinforcement learning uses error information to adjust control algorithms.

10 Jul 2026 11:02pm GMT

OSnews

Apple sues OpenAI for theft of “trade secrets”

Apple sued OpenAI on Friday, alleging the AI company has stolen the iPhone maker's trade secrets to develop its own yet-to-be-unveiled AI gadgets. In the suit, filed in the District Court of Northern California, Apple accuses OpenAI of trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract. ↫ Lisa Eadicicco and Hadas Gold at CNN I find this about as interesting and watching artificial grass grow, but with the common wisdom being that Apple is behind on "AI", it was honestly only a matter of time before the lawsuits came. After all, that's usually what companies who can't win in the market do. At the very least this will give corporate tech news websites a whole slew of new material. I just hope they both implode. We'd all be better off for it.

10 Jul 2026 10:16pm GMT

Redox gets GTK3, Tcl

Redox did the develop cools stuff thing again for a month, so we've got progress to talk about. This past month, GTK3 has been ported to Redox, as well as the Tcl programming language. Support for per-window fractional scaling has been added to Orbital, Redox' desktop environment, but it's still relatively limited for now. There's also new USB gamepad support, which already works in quite a few emulators, as well as details about how Redox intends to improve its support for running in a virtual environment over the coming 12 months, an effort sponsored by NLnet. Of course, there's also the usual bugfixes and updates to various drivers, the kernel, Relibc, and more.

10 Jul 2026 10:05pm GMT

Understanding Windows monthly updates: Servicing explained

Windows has a fairly complex update ecosystem, so every now and then, the company feels like it needs to publish clarifications and explainers so people can keep up with what's going on. Most individuals and organizations regularly deploy monthly security updates, released on the second Tuesday of each month. Windows also provides optional non-security preview updates, which give IT teams and early adopters an opportunity to validate upcoming fixes before they're included in the next monthly security update. This guide explains the purpose of each update type, when updates are released, and how they fit into the modern Windows servicing model. ↫ Chris Morrissey at the Windows IT Pro Blog It's easy to make fun of Microsoft and Windows for just how complex and obtuse the update ecosystem really is, but in all honestly it's kind of understandable. Windows is a sprawling platform used by so many different people, companies, and organisations, under so many different circumstances and in so many different environments, it makes sense that Microsoft wants to address the multitude of needs that arise from that complexity. And so we end up not only with a dizzying array of update types and a long corpus of mystic terminology, but also a long list of complex different management tools to deploy said updates. And then there's the various preview channels making everything even more complex. I'm definitely not smart, qualified, or experienced enough to come up with a better solution, but I do think choosing better names for the various update types, and perhaps a centralised settings panel inside Windows that gave users a better idea of what each type of update actually does, would go a long way to improving clarity. During my month with Windows 11, I also found it deeply frustrating just how little information Microsoft provides about each of the updates Windows is installing. As a user, I was expected to copy/paste the KB number and then hope that would lead me to useful information, while it would be much more convenient if such information was available right then and there inside Windows Update. If you can't reduce complexity, you should try to improve transparency.

10 Jul 2026 9:55pm GMT