All posts tagged: Content

Apple Hits Record 30% Recycled Content Across All Products in 2025

Apple Hits Record 30% Recycled Content Across All Products in 2025

Published by skeptic

Apple today announced that a record 30% of material across all products it shipped in 2025 came from recycled content, alongside a series of other environmental milestones published in its annual Environmental Progress Report. The achievement marks new highs across several specific components. All batteries designed by Apple now use 100% recycled cobalt, all magnets use 100% recycled rare earth elements, and all Apple-designed printed circuit boards use 100% recycled gold plating and tin soldering. Apple also completed the transition to fully fiber-based packaging, fulfilling a pledge to remove all plastic from packaging by 2025, a goal the company says it reached across every package manufactured today. Apple’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 remain down over 60% compared to 2015 levels, holding constant from 2024 despite significant business growth. The company is working toward its Apple 2030 goal of carbon neutrality across its entire footprint by the end of the decade. MacBook Neo leads the lineup on recycled material. It contains 60% recycled content overall, which is the most of any Apple device to date, …

Channel 4’s Chief Content Officer Ian Katz Stepping Down

Channel 4’s Chief Content Officer Ian Katz Stepping Down

Published by Daniella Wilson

Ian Katz, chief content officer at Channel 4 for almost nine years, will step down from his role in October this year. Katz, responsible for hit shows It’s a Sin, Big Boys, and We Are Lady Parts, is the longest-serving content chief in Channel 4‘s history. He started out in journalism and was deputy editor at The Guardian until 2013, before he became editor on the BBC’s Newsnight. During his Channel 4 tenure, he has presided over a period of “considerable creative and commercial success,” according to the channel, and played a central role in its transformation from linear broadcaster to streamer. His recent slate includes Virgin Island, Dirty Business, A Woman of Substance, Handcuffed: LastPair Standing, Secret Genius and The Piano. Audience favourites have also thrived, such as Taskmaster — which Katz brought to the channel — Gogglebox and The Great British Bake Off. Nigella Lawson’s recruitment to the latter was Katz’s doing. On his watch, Channel 4 has produced documentaries and current affairs films that include Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain, Go Back …

This Startup Wants You to Pay Up to Talk With AI Versions of Human Experts

This Startup Wants You to Pay Up to Talk With AI Versions of Human Experts

Published by skeptic

The company isn’t exactly breaking new ground. The idea of a chatbot standing in for a human is fairly common. As is the idea of cashing in on it. For instance, Manhattan psychologist Becky Kennedy has built a parenting advice business that features a chatbot named Gigi trained on her acumen and knowledge. Kennedy’s company pulled in $34 million last year. So if you are an expert, Onix might sound pretty good—imagine a bot with your persona making money for you by interacting with thousands of clients with no effort on your part. As an Onix white paper puts it, “The expert’s knowledge base becomes a capital asset that generates revenue independent of their time.” Onix hopes to eventually have many thousands of experts offering versions of themselves. But for now, it’s starting with a highly vetted group of 17, with a concentration on health and wellness. Though most of these experts have impressive professional resumes, they are notable as marketers and influencers as well. Some have books or podcasts to promote, or supplements or …

Roku adds 6 free channels amid massive 2026 content push

Roku adds 6 free channels amid massive 2026 content push

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Roku has quietly added six free channels to its streaming platform. The Roku Channel, which automatically comes with the purchase of any Roku TV or device, brings over 500 free live channels to customers without requiring any subscription fees. After the most recent update launched Tuesday, viewers now have access to six new ad-supported options across a variety of genres, from Westerns to sitcoms to competition shows.Rawhide, The Beverly Hillbillies, Ink Master, Tosh.0, MTV en Español and Westerns are all available to watch now on the Roku Channel with commercial breaks. Rawhide is an American Western TV series that aired from 1959 to 1965, starring Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood. The show’s eight seasons will air on a loop available to channel 313 on The Roku Channel. Viewers can get even more Western content on channel 6036, which is dedicated entirely …

Cafeyn finalises Readly merger to become ‘largest buyer of publishing content in Europe’

Cafeyn finalises Readly merger to become ‘largest buyer of publishing content in Europe’

Published by Sam Flores

The Readly app displayed on a tablet. Picture: Readly French all-you-can-read platform Cafeyn has finalised its acquisition of Readly’s non-Nordic businesses, meaning it is now running the platform in the UK. The deal saw Cafeyn buy Readly’s operations in the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Australia from Bonnier. It has taken the group to combined revenues of nearly €100m (around £87m). Some 350,000 Readly users have been added to the Cafeyn group, taking it to a total of more than 2.5 million users who can access 5,200 publications from 1,100 publishers. Users in this non-Nordic group will continue to see Readly branding. Press Gazette previously reported that the merger will see increased investment for publishers and an enhanced mobile app. Chief executive Laurent Kayser told Press Gazette said that the merger means more money to publishers through increased scale. “We will be the largest group in Europe buying content from publishers,” he said, adding that as more publishers join the platform “the more [revenue] we distribute to publishers”. This revenue is “pure margin”, he said. “The …

The Facebook insider building content moderation for the AI era

The Facebook insider building content moderation for the AI era

Published by skeptic

When Brett Levenson left Apple in 2019 to lead business integrity at Facebook, the social media giant was in the thick of the Cambridge Analytica fallout. At the time, he thought he could simply fix Facebook’s content moderation problem with better technology.  The problem, he quickly learned, ran deeper than technology. Human reviewers were expected to memorize a 40-page policy document that had been machine-translated into their language, he said. Then they had about 30 seconds per piece of flagged content to decide not just whether that  content violated the rules, but what to do about it: block it, ban the user, limit the spread. Those quick calls were only “slightly better than 50% accurate,” according to Levenson. “It was kind of like flipping a coin, whether the human reviewers could actually address policies correctly, and this was many days after the harm had already occurred anyway,” Levenson told TechCrunch. That sort of delayed, reactive approach is not sustainable in a world of nimble and well-funded adversarial actors. The rise of AI chatbots has only …

NYT Cuts Ties With Writer as Scrutiny of AI Content Grows

NYT Cuts Ties With Writer as Scrutiny of AI Content Grows

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Amid mounting scrutiny into AI usage creeping into the newspaper of record, the New York Times has cut ties with a freelance writer after discovering he turned to an AI model to help write a book review, The Guardian reports. A thudding prose style wasn’t the giveaway this time, but accidentally-cribbed work. The NYT was alerted to the issue by a reader who observed that a January review of “Watching Over Her” by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, written by author and journalist Alex Preston, bore remarkable similarities to a review of the same book by Christobel Kent that was published in The Guardian last August. After the NYT launched an investigation, Preston admitted he used an AI tool to help draft the review and failed to spot the sections that were pulled from The Guardian. In a statement to the British newspaper, which Preston has previously written for, Preston said he was “hugely embarrassed” and had “made a serious mistake.”  …

UK parents urged to curb fast-paced screen content for small children – neuroscientist who advised government explains why

UK parents urged to curb fast-paced screen content for small children – neuroscientist who advised government explains why

Published by skeptic

The UK Department for Education has just released guidance for parents on early years screen use, which I advised on as an expert. It includes recommended limits on the time children spend on screens. It also advises avoiding fast-paced content for younger children. Recent research from the UK Department for Education suggests that over half of two-year-olds now spend over two hours a day watching screens. For the top 20%, that figure approaches five hours daily – more than a third of their waking life. These changes have occurred rapidly, particularly since the introduction of smartphones. In 2009, children aged five to 15 spent around nine hours a week – about 1.3 hours a day – watching screens. But the nature of what children watch has shifted just as dramatically as the amount of time they spend doing so. Fifteen years ago, close to half of UK preschoolers tuned into CBeebies – BBC content aimed at children aged six and under – each week. Today, children’s engagement with content produced by TV companies is almost …

Disney+, RAI in Italy Strike Content Deal

Disney+, RAI in Italy Strike Content Deal

Published by Daniella Wilson

And the latest content deal between Walt Disney‘s streaming service Disney+ and a big European broadcaster is with… RAI in Italy. The agreement, unveiled on Tuesday, follows a Friday deal with RTVE in Spain that marked the first time that a state broadcaster in Europe agreed to make shows available on a streaming platform the day after their linear broadcasts. Now, the RAI deal marks the second agreement for Disney, and also the second within a week, that will bring content to Disney+ immediately after its linear broadcast. As part of it, popular talk show Belve, hosted by Francesca Fagnani, and game show The Floor – Ne rimarrà solo uno, hosted this year by Paola Perego and Gabriele Vagnato, will be available for Disney+ customers in Italy to stream from the day after airing on RAI 2. In addition, Disney+ will feature such RAI titles from the recent past as Braccialetti rossi, Mina Settembre, L’amica geniale, Un passo dal cielo and Màkari, as well as the docu-reality series Il Collegio. These programs will be offered in a dedicated collection on Disney+ in Italy, which will launch soon. The RAI deal is the latest step in a big Disney+ push …