Traditional barcodes are set to be replaced by next-generation QR-style codes by 2027, offering enhanced functionality such as embedding sell-by dates, allergens, and recycling information. The Guardian reports: Tesco has started using them on some products, and other trials have suggested that waste of perishable food such as poultry can be cut by embedding sell-by dates in the new QR-style codes, allowing for more dynamic discounting. QR (quick response) codes will allow customers to instantly access more information about the product, including how to recycle batteries, clothes and building materials when tougher environmental regulations bite. But they will also put a greater demand on the world's cloud computing resources, where the extra data they contain will be stored -- meaning a potentially greater carbon footprint.

The first barcode was read in an Ohio supermarket in June 1974 when a packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum was rung up. It was devised by Joe Woodland, an inventor who had been implored by a retailer frustrated at losing profits, to speed up checkout queues and stocktaking. Coca-Cola has used the new generation of codes in parts of Latin America for refillable bottles, with the QR code allowing the counting of refills so that a requirement of 25 before recycling can be enforced. The Australian supermarket chain Woolworths is said to have reduced food waste by up to 40% in some areas, as the codes allow stores to better spot products approaching expiry and discount more efficiently. "We've defined an ambition that by the end of 2027 all retailers in the world will be able to read those next-generation barcodes," said Renaud de Barbuat, the president and chief executive of GS1. "We think it's doable ... It represents some investment on the part of retailers to adapt their point-of-sale systems, but it's already well under way."

Anne Godfrey, the chief executive of GS1 UK, said: "This has been in the works for some time, but Covid really accelerated it. During the pandemic, everyone got used to pointing their phones at QR codes in pubs and restaurants to access the menu."

Amazon is planning to open 3,000 of its cashierless stores by 2021, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, planning a major push into retail as it continues to scale its online platform. CNBC: The e-commerce giant currently has three locations open in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, and just this past week opened a location in Chicago. Bloomberg adds: Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos sees eliminating meal-time logjams in busy cities as the best way for Amazon to reinvent the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, where most spending still occurs. But he's still experimenting with the best format: a convenience store that sells fresh prepared foods as well as a limited grocery selection similar to 7-Eleven franchises, or a place to simply pick up a quick bite to eat for people in a rush, similar to the U.K.-based chain Pret a Manger, one of the people said.

[...] Adding 3,000 convenience stores would make AmazonGo among the biggest chains in U.S. The internet giant is considering plans to have about 10 locations open by the end of this year, about 50 locations in major metro areas in 2019, and then as many as 3,000 by 2021, said the people, who requested anonymity discussing internal plans. Opening multiple locations in proximity, like it's doing in Seattle, could also help Amazon reduce costs by centralizing food production in one kitchen serving many stores. The U.S. currently has 155,000 convenience stores, with 122,500 of them combined with gas stations, according to industry group NACS. Non-fuel purchases at convenience stores totaled $233 billion in 2016, with cigarettes and other tobacco products the best-selling items.

An anonymous reader writes with this quick bite from Info Q: "Oracle is seeking feedback from the Java community about what it should work on for the next version of Java EE, the popular and widely used enterprise framework. As well as standardizing APIs for PaaS and SaaS the vendor is looking at removing some legacy baggage including EJB 2.x remote and local client view (EJBObject, EJBLocalObject, EJBHome, and EJBLocalHome interfaces) and CORBA."

alancronin writes with a quick bite from the Dallas News about everyone's favorite FPS: "Few video games have had the impact that Doom has on the medium as a whole. While it wasn't the first first-person shooter out there, it was certainly one of the earliest hits of the genre, due in no small part to its revolutionary multiplayer. Today, that game is 20 years old. Made in Mesquite by a bunch of young developers including legends John Carmack and John Romero, Doom went on to 'transform pop culture,' as noted by the sub-title of the book Masters of Doom." Yesterday, but who's counting. Fire up your favorite source port and slay some hellspawn to celebrate (or processes). I'm partial to Doomsday (helps that it's in Debian).

An anonymous reader writes with a quick bite from El Reg: "The OpenStack open-source project has come in for criticism from a Gartner analyst because the claims made by companies frequently don't line up with reality. In a forthright post published on Tuesday Gartner analyst and research director Alessandro Perilli chided the OpenStack community for a lack of clarity, lack of transparency, lack of vision, and lack of pragmatism." An OpenStack developer disagrees, and instead suggests that the perceived lack of clarity is just a result of the open development process. You just don't get to see which Amazon cloud projects fail since they are hidden behind the corporate wall.

An anonymous reader writes with this quick bite from the H: "Just a few days after the one year anniversary of the release of the first version of OpenOffice from the Apache Foundation (Apache OpenOffice 3.4) on 8 May 2012, the project can now boast 50 million downloads of the Open Source office suite. 10 million of those downloads happened since the beginning of March. In contrast, LibreOffice claimed it had 15 million unique downloads of its office suite in all of 2012."

rtoz writes with a quick bite from rtoz.org about Google's latest news about Project Glass: "Google has released video preview of its forthcoming Google Glass wearable headset, providing a fresh, and more realistic look at the device's user interface. Based on the demo, Google Glass will allow users to receive and execute onscreen directions, send voice-controlled messages, and search the web through speech. The UI also includes voice-controlled photos, and suggests that the device will offer onscreen translation support. And, it looks like the Google Glass will be water-resistant. Google has previously said it is aiming to launch Glass by early 2014, though it is already pushing out developer editions priced at $1,500." They're looking for developers, but only if you're hip enough.

An anonymous reader writes with a quick bite from The Next Web about the latest Firefox beta, this time featuring some under-the-hood improvements: "Mozilla on Monday announced the release of Firefox 18 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can download it now from Mozilla.org/Firefox/Beta. The biggest addition in this update is significant JavaScript improvements, courtesy of Mozilla's new JavaScript JIT compiler called IonMonkey. The company promises the performance bump should be noticeable whenever Firefox is displaying Web apps, games, and other JavaScript-heavy pages."

An anonymous reader writes with a quick bite from Nature World News: "The contribution of economic decline in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is very low, reveals a new study. Researcher Richard York of the University of Oregon studied data collected between 1960 and 2008 from more than 150 nations in order to analyze the impact of economic decline on greenhouse gas emissions." From the paper: "In Model 2, the percentage of the population living in urban areas and the percentage of GDP from the manufacturing sector were included as control variables. This model has lower data coverage than Model 1 (154 versus 160 nations, and 4,134 versus 5,630 nation-year observations) owing to missing data on the control variables. The coefficients, at 0.752 for growth and 0.346 for decline, are similar to those from Model 1 and, as in Model 1, are both significantly different from 0 and significantly different from each other."

An anonymous reader writes "This is not an ordinary book and extraordinary would still be an understatement. Robert Louis Kemp has built a plateau of quod erat demonstrandum (Q.E.D.) in math, physics and logic; defined as his Super Principia Mathematica. Beyond brilliant, Kemp has worked on his book for over two decades, sacrificing personal comfort and financial security to laboriously bring to fruition his textbook style, hardback, expertly illustrated principles to the understanding level prevailed by most people. By 'most people' he means those who have a basic understanding of mathematics, geometry, algebra, calculus, physics and most importantly possessing the curiosity to learn." Read on for the rest of Gary's review.

Last week hundreds of you posted questions for Slashdot's CmdrTaco, AKA Rob Malda. Today we present his answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions. CT: You can continue to sign up for 10 year anniversary parties but we're already working on shipping shirts so you won't be able to get a care package... but you can still try to run for the big grand prize by just taking videos of pictures or just doing something cool at your parties to prove that we should have been there.

Daniel Holmes writes "In addition to using PHP to 'just get the job done' for years now, I've been running a humble user group here in the Midwest. As such, I have read numerous books on and around the subject, always looking for something great to inspire my colleagues, group members and myself alike. There are a metric ton of books out there that will walk you through PHP syntax -- this is not one of them. If you are looking for a book on rapidly developing prototype sites, or writing lots of HTML-embedded PHP, just keep looking. But if you have read even one of those books, or just felt like your programming style itself could use a little upgrade, then go get yourself a copy of PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice by Matt Zandstra." Read on for the rest of Holmes's review.

Game reviews today focus on graphics, sound and story, and usually say very little about fun. Rarely is it possible to describe a game anymore as simply "fun", and to some extent that's a credit to the growth of the industry. Fun, though, is exactly what Kirby Canvas Curse conjures up. The first title to really capture the spirit of the Nintendo DS is a quick moving experience that's easy to pick up and put down, bite sized chunks of art and entertainment. Read on for my commentary on the latest imaginative HAL Labs game.

More Sci-Fi reading for your summer weekend: Javed Ikbal writes "Decipher by Stel Pavlou is a mind-blowing work of science fiction. If you thought Stephenson's Snowcrash did a great job of bringing myth and science together, bite into this. I am still shaking my head over the amount of research that must have gone into this book." Read on for Javed's review. Warning -- spoilers within.

Andy Murren submits this review of Nick Christenson's Sendmail Performance Tuning, writing "The first thing that I noticed about this book was how relatively thin it is at only 223 pages. This is compared to the O'Reilly Sendmail book by Bryan Costales and Eric Allman (a.k.a. the 'Bat Book') which weights in at 1232 pages. In this case, thin is good. The second thing that I noticed about the book is the quote from Eric Allman emblazoned across the top that proclaims 'This book is great.' That's rather ringing endorsement from the original creator of sendmail. But great what? A great technical reference? Companion to the bat book? Kindling? Now here is my sound bite about this book: 'One damned fine technical book.'" Read on for the rest of Andy's review.

This is part 2 of the interview with Dr. Richard Wallace. You might want to start with part 1.

chromatic is back with a mini-compendium of introductory Linux texts -- and yes, they have the famously protected "Dummies" trademark. Don't scoff at the nature of these books, though; the skill of translating the arcana of any computer topic (and boy are they all arcane to the uninitiated!) into language that mom, kids and the guy down the street can understand is not a common one. If you don't know what a root prompt (or an editor) is, or why you might want one, it's hard to do much else with your system.

Unstoppable reader Jason Bennett has penned another review, this time of Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe -- proof that it's good to venture beyond the O'Reilly section of the store, at least the few feet to the Current Science area.

Kurt Gray sent a review of Beginning Linux Programming, by Neil Matthew & Richard Stones. Click here to learn how to contribute more code.