Slashdot Mirror

China is gearing up to launch a social credit system in 2020, giving all citizens an identity number that will be linked to a permanent record. Like a financial score, everything from paying back loans to behaviour on public transport will be included. One aspect of this social credit system is a new app in the northern province of Hebei. From a report: According to the state-run newspaper China Daily, the Hebei-based app will alert people if there are in 500 metres of someone in debt. It's like being on Oxford Street and being able to work out everyone around you who was in debt. According to the financial charity, the Money Charity, the average UK household debt (including mortgages) was $76,000, in June last year. That's a lot of notifications.

An anonymous reader quotes New York magazine: Salmon are just the latest entry in a growing cornucopia of animal faces loaded into databases. For some animals, the biometric data gathered from them is being used to aid in conservation efforts. For others, the resulting AI could help ward off poachers. While partly creepy and partly very cute, monitoring of these animals can both help protect their populations and ensure safe, traceable livestock for developing communities...

U.K. researchers are using online resources like Flickr and Instagram to help build and strengthen a database that will eventually help track global tiger populations in real time. Once collected, the photos are analyzed by everyday people in a free app called Wildsense... The mighty lion is being surveilled too. Conservationists and wildlife teachers are using facial recognition to keep tabs on a database of over 1,000 lions... Wildlife experts are tracking elephants to protect them from encroaching poachers. Using Google's Cloud AutoML Vision machine learning software, the technology will uniquely identify elephants in the wild. According to the Evening Standard, the tech will even send out an alert if it detects poachers in the same frame.

The story of whale facial tracking is one of crowdsourcing success. After struggling to distinguish specific whales from one another on his own, marine biologist Christian Khan uploaded the photos to data-competition site Kaggle and, within four months, data-science company Deepsense was able to accurately detect individual whale faces with 87% accuracy. Since then, detection rates have steadily improved and are helping conservationists track and monitor the struggling aquatic giant.
U.S. researchers are trying to protect "the world's most endangered animal" with LemurFaceID, which is able to accurately differentiate between two lemur faces with 97% accuracy. But "In the livestock surveillance arms race China is definitely leading the charge," the article notes, citing e-commerce giant JD.com and its use of facial recognition to monitor herds of pigs to detect their age, weight, and diet.

And one Chinese company even offers a blockchain-based chicken tracking system (codenamed "GoGo Chicken") with an app that can link a grocery store chicken to "its birthplace, what food it ate and how many steps it walked during its life."

An anonymous reader shares a report: A contraceptive mobile phone app used by tens of thousands of British women has come under fire after reportedly sparking a string of unwanted pregnancies. Swedish birth control app Natural Cycles, which costs $55, tracks body temperature to accurately predict when in the month a woman is more likely to fall pregnant. The period monitor was hailed as a non-mood altering alternative to the pill and, if used perfectly, was found to be 99 per cent effective by researchers. But the app has come under fire after the Sodersjukhuset hospital in Stockholm lodged a complaint with the Swedish Medical Products Agency, the country's government body responsible for regulation of medical devices. It claimed staff at the hospital had recorded 37 women who had fallen pregnant in the last quarter of 2017 after using the app. One midwife said the hospital had a duty to report all side effects.

Free movement of EU citizens to Britain will end when the country leaves the EU in March 2019, Theresa May's spokesman said Monday, moving to contain a Cabinet row over immigration after Brexit. From a report: Downing Street (headquarters of the government of the United Kingdom) said on Monday it was "wrong" to suggest free movement would "continue as it is now" once Britain leaves the EU. It comes following days of confusion and rumours of infighting between Cabinet colleagues over the crucial issue of immigration after Brexit.

UK chip designer Imagination Technologies -- which is in dispute with Apple, its largest customer -- has put itself up for sale. Shares in the company more than halved in April when Imagination said that Apple was to stop using its technology. From a report: The firm was regarded as a leading light in Britain's burgeoning tech sector, but ran into trouble when the phones giant, by far its biggest customer, said it would no longer rely on it for graphics design. Apple accounts for more than half of Imagination's revenues and last year held takeover talks with Imagination. Two parts of the business, MIPS and Ensigma, were already up for sale. Imagination said it has received "interest from a number of parties for a potential acquisition of the whole group." It is in "preliminary discussions" with the aid of bankers from Rothschild.

An anonymous reader writes: The body that represents airline pilots in the UK has called for handheld laser pointers to be classed as offensive weapons, after a Virgin Atlantic flight to the U.S. was forced to return to Heathrow when its co-pilot was dazzled by a laser during takeoff. The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said aircraft were being "attacked" by the devices "at an alarming rate and with lasers with ever-increasing strength." It said the problem was becoming "more and more urgent."

An anonymous reader writes "The Victoria and Albert Museum has cancelled an 'experimental' concert by a death metal rock band amid fears that the high decibel levels could destroy some of its most treasured artefacts, including Ming vases and priceless sculptures. The British band planned to play inside a specially-constructed ceramic sculpture with the idea that the piece would explode under the force of hits such as Order of the Leech and Fear, Emptiness, Despair" I believe this "death metal rock" is known as "grindcore." Maybe they should book Manowar next.

itwbennett writes "British Airways wants to be the airline where everybody knows your name. The idea behind the 'Know Me' program is that by using Google Images to ID passengers, they'll be able to recreate the 'feeling of recognition you get in a favourite restaurant,' Jo Boswell, head of customer analysis at BA told the London Evening Standard. But the more privacy minded among us know that the airline could end up seeing a lot more than your face."