The Download: a novel form of censorship in China, and a self-taught robot dog

Imagine you are working on your novel on your home computer. It’s nearly finished; you have already written approximately one million words. All of a sudden, the online word processing software tells you that you can no longer open the draft because it contains illegal information. Within an instant, all your words are lost. This […]

This robot dog just taught itself to walk

The team’s algorithm, called Dreamer, uses past experiences to build up a model of the surrounding world. Dreamer also allows the robot to conduct trial-and-error calculations in a computer program as opposed to the real world, by predicting potential future outcomes of its potential actions. This allows it to learn faster than it could purely […]

Hackers are targeting industrial systems with malware

Getty Images reader comments 12 with 12 posters participating Share this story From the what-could-possibly-go-wrong files comes this: An industrial control engineer recently made a workstation part of a botnet after inadvertently installing malware advertising itself as a means for recovering lost passwords. Lost passwords happen in many organizations. A programmable logic controller—used to automate […]

Breaking new ground: Sustainability in Malaysia

Technology is central to the country’s sustainability agenda. Malaysia’s commercial hub, Kuala Lumpur, has rolled out a smart city plan, which includes accelerating digital transformation by focusing on education and promoting cloud technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), among other areas. The Malaysian government has also emphasized technology investment in its Budget 2022, with up to […]

The Download: tracking teachers online, and how influencers navigate algorithms

Tyler said he was unable to enter phrases like “Black Lives Matter” and “supporting Black excellence” into his Marketplace profile. However, phrases like “white supremacy” and “supporting white excellence” were allowed. TikTok apologized and blamed an automatic filter. However, these sorts of problems have cropped up and been flagged by creators again and again. Brooke […]

Griffin on Tech: The lesson from Uber’s cut-throat gameplan

Peter Griffin, Editor. 15 July 2022, 12:30 pm Big Tech is leaking like never before. Last year Frances Haugen walked out of Facebook with thousands of internal documents outlining how executives ignored evidence their platforms were causing harm to users. Weeks later she was in front of the US Congress giving testimony to lawmakers who […]