tv Click BBC News February 26, 2023 12:30pm-1:01pm GMT
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this is bbc news, the headlines: at least 43 people have died after a boat carrying migrants sank near the coast of southern italy. officials say it crashed against rocks in rough weather and several people are still missing. talks between the eu and the uk are continuing, to try to strike a new deal over post—brexit trade rules for northern ireland. both sides say an agreement is coming closer. under the current deal, goods coming from other parts of the uk are checked on arrival in northern ireland to allow them to be taken into the republic of ireland without any further checks. counting is under way in nigeria's presidential election. saturday's voting was largely peaceful, but there were some reports of clashes between rival groups of supporters in lagos.
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parts of california have experienced their lowest temperatures for more than a century, as a blizzard brought snowfall for the first time in decades. a cold weather front from the arctic has caused disruption along america's west coast. you're watching bbc news. now it's time for click. lara: this week, we're walking on sunshine. i spencer: yes, paul carter and the ways of catching some rays on the water. mark bangs the drums as he gets lost in the latest ps vr2 headset. and zoe's walking on broken glass. but don't worry, she's on the mend. do i get the job?
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er, yes. ido! fantastic! are you sure?! they laugh here on click, we've been lucky enough to visit some of the most beautiful parts of the world. yet what goes on beneath the surface in some of these places can serve as the starkest reminder of the effects of pollution and climate change on our world. and sometimes it's also places like here, the fjords of norway, where some of the most inspiring ideas come to life, like this island of floating solar panels. oh, thank you. i've made it! wow. we're walking on water. i remember you wobbling about on that solar array in the fjord. it was only like a few millimetres thick under your feet, wasn't it? yeah, it was all about the material. it had to be light enough that it could do the job, whilst also being strong enough to be able to withstand
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any weather conditions. well, fortunately, today's one is much sturdier. and just to prove that you can build little islands of nature anywhere you want, we're currently at the camley street nature park here in the very heart of london. and now paul carter is taking the next step in floating solar farms. he's been to portugal to see the country's latest innovation. paul: over the past two years, energy prices have soared to record levels, leading to some countries increasing their efforts to harness the potential of their available renewable power sources. blessed with its sunny climate, portugal is perfectly placed to accelerate its shift to solar. although you may not have seen a solar farm like this before. i'm on the alqueva reservoir in the south of the country to see a solar array from a different perspective. it's the size of five football pitches and is home to more than 12,000 photovoltaic panels.
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so you'd normally expect to see something like this taking up lots of space in a field. this is actually a floating solar farm and it's the largest of its kind in europe to be located on a reservoir. and it can generate enough electricity to power 1,500 homes in the local area. and it's a pretty impressive sight. construction of the platform began in january 2022 and was finally moored in place five months later. byjuly, it was supplying power to a quarter of the population in the neighbouring portel and mourao regions. with a price tag of six million euros, the solution isn't cheap. but energy firm edp estimates the solar farm will recoup its investment in a decade. but there's a particular reason why the solar farm was built at this spot. namely, its proximity to the alqueva dam.
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the hydroelectric plant only use one third of the capacity of the power line. so we have two thirds available. and then we, the objective was to use that available capacity to inject an additional renewable source, in this case solar. so we created this hybrid concept. so we combine solar and hydropower on the same power line, sharing the same infrastructure. but there are other benefits to having the solar platform on water. being closer to the water surfaces, we reduce the temperature of the panel and then we increase the efficiency of the panels. we observed an increase in efficiency up to 10% and annual average increase of around 4% increase of production. large platforms like this one also cool water temperatures by shielding the surface from the sun. this not only reduces evaporation, but prevents the growth of blooms
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of blue green algae, which can produce harmful toxins. but there is one rather messy downside to having such a large platform on the water. and one thing that i couldn't help but notice when we were looking at the panels is the local birds leave some gifts behind. what kind of impact does that have? and how do you manage that? when they are very dirty, it has an impact on the efficiency of the panels. we are doing some proof of concepts with the robot. we have the idea to have autonomous robots doing these clean—ups with some artificial intelligence also predicting when is the best time to do this clean—up. and with thousands of panels, that's potentially a lot of clean—up.
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but that begs another question. with all these panels sat on a concrete platform, what's keeping the platform afloat? this is it? there you go. it's pretty mind—blowing to think that this can support hundreds of tonnes of concrete and solar panels. that's right. it doesn't seem like it, but it works! it's amazing. these floating systems, they will have to last around about 20 years, more or less. you have a lot of mechanical stress on the platform. so essentially what we tried to do is to design a compound that can have the best of both worlds, so recycled polyethylene and cork. but despite their advantages, it's estimated that currently less than i% of the world's solar installations are floating. this is in part due to cost and being able to position panels at an optimum angle to maximise their output. but already, new tech is being developed that allows a solar farm, like this one in the netherlands, to track the sun throughout the day, rather like a sunflower does. it's claimed that sun—tracking installations could increase energy
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production by a third, and so the future looks bright for solar, where every country, landlocked or not, can become its own energy island. that was paul. isn't it interesting that those solar platforms were floating on old bits of plastic and cork? i mean, normally we want to get that sort of stuff out of the water, don't you? absolutely. and we've been speaking to a company that's gained a lot of attention and investment by using giant nets and ai robots to deal with the global problem of plastic pollution. obviously it's been way harder than i ever imagined it to be. it's the immensity of the problem. there's a lot of plastic that's already in the ocean. there's 60 years of legacy in these ocean garbage patches that needs to be cleaned up.
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my name is boyan slat, and i'm the founder and ceo at the ocean cleanup. there's two things that we do. on one hand, we clean up the legacy pollution in these we develop these very long u—shaped barriers that we pull forth through this patch at a very slow speed, so that it's safe for marine life and filters out the plastic, retains that, and then every few days we take the system out. periodically, we take the plastic to land for recycling. the current system that we have out there, 800 metres in length. but already it has cleaned up almost 200,000 kilos of plastic, which is 0.2% of the whole great pacific garbage patch. we are still developing the next generation of cleaning technology, we call system three. we're deploying that in the summer of 2023.
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we are making the system three times as big, so 2,400 metres. this will clean up at thrice the rate. and then our models show that if we then deploy roughly ten of those systems, we can actually clean up most of the great pacific garbage patch by the end of the decade. so rivers really are the arteries that carry trash from land to sea. so when it rains, plastic washes from streets into creeks, into rivers and then ultimately to the ocean. so we have developed a collection of technologies we call interceptors, which are automated systems that we put in the mouth of rivers and that catches the trash before it reaches the oceans. kind of our flagship tool in our toolkit is what we call the interceptor original, which is this solar—powered autonomous robot, essentially, that has these conveyor belts to automatically scoop out the trash.
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distribute it in dumpsters and then when it's full, you can empty it and essentially keep cleaning. we've developed these ai—powered cameras. and what we do is we attach these to bridges, and what it does is it automatically scans the amount of plastic that's flowing through a river. then we actually have a very similar technology that we use on the oceans, where we attach cameras to the bows of ships, which allows us to automatically scan the surface of the ocean. so far, with our ocean clean—up system in the great pacific garbage patch, with our fleet of interceptors we have collected more than two million kilos of trash, which on one hand is quite satisfying. on the other hand, of course, we know it's stilljust the very beginning of thisjourney because our ultimate goal is to collect and stop more than 80% of all the plastic in the oceans.
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time for a look at this week's tech news. twitter has announced that text message two factor authentication will only be available for its paying subscribers. elon musk tweeted its authenticated app would remain free and was more secure. experts are concerned this opens us up to more security threats. and after twitter invented twitter blue premium service, instagram and facebook have now followed suit. users there will now followed suit. users there will now be able to pay for a blue verification. 1199 for a matter verification. 1199 for a matter verification on the web or 4099 for "14 verification on the web or 4099 for -- 14 .994 verification on the web or 4099 for —— 14 .994 iphone. verification on the web or 4099 for --14 .994iphone._ -- 14 .994 iphone. social media platforms _ -- 14 .994 iphone. social media platforms have _ -- 14 .994 iphone. social media platforms have been _ -- 14 .994 iphone. social media platforms have been struggling | -- 14 .994 iphone. social media i platforms have been struggling due to the drop in advertising revenues.
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a $60 billion deal will bring more choice to its gamers. it was the last chance for the company that the largest deal in gaming history would not its competitors. wilson has designed a 3d printer to pass a bill, the first of its kind, which was introduced it in the at&t slam dunk contest. it nearly fits performance regulations. however, nothing will change for the wilson nba game ball. as the name suggests, psvr 2 is the successor to 2016's 06 playstation vr. still got it! cosmetically, it's a pretty sleek headset. it does away with the jumble of cables and post—processing box that made the original playstation vr such a pain to set up and live with. instead, it has just one cable which connects to the playstation v
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console via a usb—c. that is it. thanks to the addition of four cameras on the outside of the headset, the player can see the space around them if they need to and the device doesn't need the same sort of extravagant webcam and coloured light set—up that was the hallmark of the original. it comes with a set of headphones, although you can plug your own headphones into it if you want to. and then we have the two dedicated wireless controllers. they pretty much mimic the kind of features that you find on a normal playstation controller. so you've got your thumbsticks here, triggers. to put the headset on, you have this button on the back, so it's adjustable, and then this little dial here allows you to get a perfect fit. inside it sports a 4k oled display, with 110 degree field of view, and there are two more cameras inside the headset for eye—tracking. it also makes use of something called foveated rendering, which uses the eye—tracking cameras to focus on where the player's eye
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is actually looking, maximising resolution in those areas. there's a small amount of haptic force feedback via the headset and controllers, but that can be a hit and miss affair. the virtual reality landscape has changed quite a bit in the last few years. there's now a wide variety of different headsets. as a result, there's a decent number of vr games actually available and quite a few of them are being ported over to this device, which is a good thing, because the old vr back catalogue isn't compatible with the new headset. perhaps the game that shows off the potential of psvr 2 best is horizon call of the mountain... that woke �*em up! ..a home—grown effort from playstation, imagining its popular horizon zero dawn franchise with its post—apocalyptic humans versus robotic dinosaur action. here you can see how the combat really, really works. using a bow and arrow,
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you have to aim in exactly the same way as you would in the real world. the clue is in the name, call of a mountain, this game involves a lot of climbing. there's a little bit of haptic force feedback, but it's not as successful on this device as it is on other vr headsets. sometimes the little bit of feedback you get is a bit on the feeble side. the world is populated with things you can interact with. so, for example, i can bang this drum like that. or i can pick up this over here, throw it, and it alljust adds to the level of immersion. one of playstation�*s great strengths has traditionally been in exclusive titles — games that can only be played on its platform. there's a massive question mark hanging over this bit of kit. how many third party developers will make really, really great games specifically
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for this device? this is certainly a good vr headset, but i think on this evidence, one of its biggest stumbling blocks will be its price. at £529, it's more expensive than the ps5 console. meta's quest 2 is wireless and cheaper, but it's less powerful than playstation�*s offering. however, at this price point, i'm not convinced this device will take vr mainstream. now back to sustainability, and one thing we can all do is re—use the materials that have already been created. yeah, recycling's part of all of our lives these days, but of course it can go a lot further than just milk bottles and cardboard boxes. yeah, you can recycle so many different things — clothes, mobile phones. and one academic in zurich has even bigger ideas — whole buildings, as l] rich has been finding out. it's an apocryphal story that the first time paper was recycled was way back
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in seventh century japan. then, alongside disco, the 1970s gave us the idea of sustainability for environmental reasons and the birth of this iconic logo. since then, in our individual efforts to help the planet, we've been recycling our glass bottles and paper waste one piece at a time. but one academic and entrepreneur believes we should be thinking bigger, a lot bigger — recycling entire buildings! urban mining is really about mining the city for building materials rather than mining the earth. # you'll see me getting back up, up # _ even when i fall down...# professor de wolf is working on a project to document and re—use parts of buildings for the construction industry. in the construction industry we have a lot of waste, a lot of greenhouse gas emissions,
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and a lot of resource depletion. so we use a lot of raw materials to build our buildings. we also use a lot of energy and greenhouse gases to produce our building materials. we also waste a lot of our materials when we demolish a building to build a new one. so, instead ofjust bringing this waste to landfill and then extracting more raw materials to build the new buildings, why don't we try to deconstruct the building carefully so that we don't damage the materials and then build new buildings with those materials? to do this, all the individual materials need to be carefully documented. sounds like the perfect task for a machine — faster, more accurate, and less human effort. we go and scan the buildings. we make photos of the buildings. we use already existing photos like google street view, for example, so that we can use the algorithms to automatically detect which materials are in the buildings. and so we digitise the building stock.
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it was a summer project for her students which really brought this idea to life, giving rise to a dome entirely built from waste materials. they disassembled an entire building in two days only, and they also assembled this dome in only two days. and then in between the two, we taught them about digitalisation for circular constructions. so it needs a process to put an identifying mark on each piece as it's extracted from the building. the answer? qr codes. so first we're going to take the wood that we designed for the dome and we'll put it inside the laser engraver. so this should take us to the data base of the component that will have the information. it doesn't always work though, as phones prefer qr codes on pieces of paper or screens, not necessarily etched into wood. so, a little bit of tlc later...
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oh, there we go — perfect! despite this concept being in the early stages of development, professor de wolf believes that this tech could change how buildings are designed. all of these technologies can really help make it faster and better and more convenient and so also cheaper. so hopefully all of the research that we do in these technologies can help us make the circular construction model more competitive than the linear one. with construction growing throughout the world, reusing materials does seem a sensible solution to creating new buildings sustainably and cheaply. the next mission is to see if it will work outside the lab. around 10,000 broken mobile phones make their way to this repair lab every single month. and one of the main reasons is we keep dropping them!
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oops! lots of us have a story to tell. well, i dropped my phone before and completely shattered it. and then i dropped it a second time on the same day, and it was completely broken. i was coming out of our club and i was trying to text one—handed, one eye open, and i dropped on the ground and it smashed. my best friend, like bailed on me the last moment. l and i got super furious, super- angry, and because i was on a call with them and ijust hung up on them and ijust smashed my— phone on the wall. the staff here at tmt first in the uk are hard at work trying to repair broken gadgets, but the company's had trouble recruiting technicians, because while there are lots of phone repair courses, there's no industry standard. there's 33 million cars on the road and there's over 80 million mobile phones out there. there's an apprenticeship to be a car mechanic, but not an apprenticeship to be a repair technician. so there's already demand today for a mobile device apprenticeship.
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to deal with the problem, this firm has set up its own academy for trainees who can soon find themselves in demand. i'm going shopping or something, everyone is like, "are you working on that company? "can you just tell me how i can fix this device?" 0r, "what's wrong with my software? something is weird". experienced technicians can do up to 20 repairs each day and the average repair costs between £150 and £200. the most common fix is, unsurprisingly, smashed screens. so we have here a device where i will show you how to disassembly and assembly the device back. yeah. and you need to replicate the same process. 0k. questions? um... i'm not sure i'm going to remember everything, but i will try.
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0k. this is fiddly. you need a steady hand and plenty of patience. you also have to wear special accessories to make sure you don't discharge any static, say, from walking on a carpet. a small amount can brick a gadget. does it work? yes! success! how long did that take me? it's taken me about 40 minutes, but i have managed to take this apart and put it back together again. wow! do i get thejob? yes. i do! fantastic! are you sure?! yes. we asked the institute of apprenticeships and technical education, a uk government agency, whether there are any plans for a phone repair apprenticeship in england. there is a proposal that's already been developed and fully approved. what we would need is a group of employers to come forward to take that forward to further develop it. we would absolutely support them to do that, but we need the employers to be at the centre of it to make sure it's fit for purpose and suits their needs. back in the lab, repaired phones are checked and return to their owners. tmt first is trying to be more environmentally sound with its repair methods.
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it can now replace the screens on some handsets without having to discard the battery and the outside frame as well. and those phones that really can't be repaired, well, they get taken apart and put in the shredder. the aim is to get all of the precious metals, which includes gold, out of this shrapnel, and then re—use — it possibly in your next mobile phone. and that's all we've got time for. yeah, thanks for watching, see you soon. bye— bye. hello there. it's all about high pressure at the moment,
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dominating the weather story. the centre of the high across scotland. that's where we've had the clearest of the skies, and the lowest temperatures. it was minus five first thing this morning in highland, and yes, there was some frost, even some snow to the tops of higher ground. it was a different story, though, across east anglia in comparison to saturday morning. the cloud was a little more well—broken. a beautiful sunrise here. but the high is going to stay with us on the whole across the country today, keeping things largely fine and quiet. but still that wind direction coming from a northeasterly. slightly lighter winds than yesterday, so therefore fewer showers hopefully around. still some cloud across northern england and north wales in particular, and still the risk of some showers here. we've also had a few showers across the kent coast this morning. but generally, central and southern england and wales, along with northwest scotland and northern ireland keeping the sunshine, and temperatures peaking between seven and nine degrees, pretty much where we should be for the final few days of february. now, as we go into the evening and overnight, the cloud reallyjust drawing in like a blanket over us. and so for many, that means it'll keep those temperatures above freezing.
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where we've got those clearer skies, particularly out to the west, once again temperatures below freezing and a frost is quite likely. but that quiet theme will stay with us not only for monday but right throughout much of the week. so as we go into monday, we've got this large area of high pressure sitting across the north, and that will continue to give quite a lot of dry weather in the forecast. still the risk of some cloud around, but maybe breaking up across east anglia and the south east of england with more of a breeze here, and still some sunny spells across western areas of scotland, northern ireland and maybe parts of the lake district. ten degrees is quite possible in the sunnier moments. now, as we move out of monday into tuesday, there's a risk of a few showers during the early hours just drifting their way through the channel. not really amounting to too much. the high continues to stay with us on the whole, and the winds will stay light. so we could potentially be chasing cloud amounts around as we look further ahead. so, on the whole there will be a good deal of dry weather, some sunny spells from time to time,
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this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm ben brown. our top stories at least 43 people have died — after a boat carrying migrants sinks near the coast of southern italy. translation: i pray for everyone of them, for translation: i pray for everyone of them. for the — translation: i pray for everyone of them, for the missing _ translation: i pray for everyone of them, for the missing and _ translation: i pray for everyone of them, for the missing and the - translation: i pray for everyone of them, for the missing and the other| them, for the missing and the other surviving migrants. the uk and the european union edge closer to a new deal on post—brexit trading rules for northern ireland — but the british government says details still need to be resolved... i don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, i understand what you are saying in that there are is a degree of quiet confidence about the progress, but we are not there yet. counting is under way in nigeria's most competitive elections in decades — with three candidates still hopeful of becoming president.
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