-
Tech NewsH&M Purged From Chinese Maps and Online Stores for Criticizing Forced Labor in Xinjiang
H&M has been purged from maps and internet listings in China after the clothing retailer criticized the use of forced labor in Xinjiang province, the area in northwestern China where Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, have been systematically oppressed by the Chinese government. Baidu Maps no longer lists H&M locations in China and Alibaba’s … Continued
By Matt Novak -
ReviewsHome Entertainment & Smart HomeThis Off-Brand Roomba Rival Gets the Job Done, With a Few Quirks
The Neabot robot vacuum is a stark white puck that hugs its charger like a baby monkey in a Harlow experiment. It has three buttons—start, charge, and clean—and a prominent sensor on top that spins rapidly as it scoots around your house. It does exactly what’s advertised on the box: It sucks up dirt and … Continued
By John Biggs -
ScienceHealthChina Enlists Tech Titans to Help It Track Coronavirus With Color-Based QR Codes: Report
In its latest dystopian stab at curbing the spread of COVID-19, the Chinese government has employed two of the biggest tech giants in Asia to help it roll out a nationwide color-based tracking system to keep tabs on those suffering from coronavirus symptoms, according to a new Reuters report. Companies enlisted for this real-life sci-fi … Continued
-
Tech NewsJack Ma Donates $14 Million For Coronavirus Vaccine, Like Average U.S. Family Donating $33
Tech billionaire Jack Ma has donated $14.5 million to help develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus that has killed at least 170 people and sickened over 7,700. Ma is China’s wealthiest person with an estimated $41.8 billion, which means that his donation is roughly equivalent to the average American household donating $33. Ma founded … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsGermany, Japan, and Taiwan Report First Coronavirus Cases in People Who Haven’t Visited China [Updated]
Germany, Japan, and Taiwan have all reported the first cases of a new SARS-like virus in people who haven’t recently visited China. The announcements, made on Tuesday, come as the number of confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV worldwide reached 4,587 and the death toll hit 106. The first person to contract the virus in Germany reportedly … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsPrivacy & SecurityAmerica Sells Its Chinese Hacking Fears at Silicon Valley’s Biggest Security Conference
Leading them around practically by the tie, neatly dressed NSA handlers guided the American spy agency’s most powerful leaders through labyrinthine crowds in San Francisco’s Moscone Center last week at the annual RSA Conference. With 50,000 attendees, RSA is the biggest cybersecurity conference in the world, known for attracting industry start-ups, giant corporations, and top … Continued
-
Tech News
‘Men Preferred’: New Report Reveals Sexist Job Ads From Top Chinese Tech Companies
It’s no secret that being a woman in tech comes with its discriminatory disadvantages, but a new report from the Human Rights Watch reveals that in China, recruiting tactics are troublingly sexist. According to the 99-page report published on Monday, Chinese tech companies including Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu openly discriminate in job ads, noting that … Continued
-
Tech News
The AI Used to Sell You More Stuff Can Now Read Better Than a Human
For the first time ever, two AI systems built to process and respond to human speech (created, respectively, by Microsoft and Chinese commerce giant Alibaba) outscored humans in a reading comprehension test designed by Stanford researchers. The Stanford Question Answering Dataset, SQuAD, is composed of a staggering 100,000 questions following brief reading passages. Created in … Continued
-
Tech News
Alibaba Founder Jack Ma Adds ‘Kung Fu Movie Star’ to Resumé
Jack Ma, the eccentric CEO of online marketplace Alibaba, has a well-documented flair for the theatrical. Now the South China Morning Post—a newspaper owned by Ma—reports their boss will assume a starring role in the upcoming short movie Gong Shou Dao. The film’s known credits, other than Ma himself, include action movie legends like Donny … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
China’s Latest Hit Mobile Game Asks Players to Please Clap for President Xi Jinping
Tencent, the developer of China’s popular messaging app WeChat, has released a mobile game that encourages citizens to applaud President Xi Jinping—just days after WeChat blocked features that citizens use to protest. The game debuted on Wednesday, after Xi’s longwinded address at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which occurs once … Continued
-
Tech NewsAlibaba Founder Jack Ma Has Set a New Bar for Tech CEO Weirdness
This is a golden era for rich nerds who make people uncomfortable. Remember Tesla CEO Elon Musk posing with maracas next to a mariachi band? Remember sentient ball of pizza dough Mark Zuckerberg doing his best normal guy impression? Okay now forget those guys because Jack Ma set the new high watermark for inscrutable technocrat … Continued
By Avery Ellis -
Tech News
Jack Ma Predicts People Will Work Just 16 Hours Per Week by 2047
Jack Ma, the billionaire businessman and chairman of the Alibaba Group, believes that automation will help workers of the future enjoy more leisure time. In fact, he sees a future where people will be working just 16 hours per week by 2047. “I think in the next 30 years, people only work four hours a … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Alibaba’s Jack Ma Issues Dire Warning That AI Could Steal CEOs’ Jobs
While Elon Musk is running around cautioning the world about the real danger of Skynet-style warrior robots, Jack Ma would like you to consider another possible problem: CEOs might lose their overpaid gigs and there will be no golden parachute. Well, let’s be honest, there probably will be a golden parachute… somehow. https://deadspin.com/science-ceos-are-such-bullshit-1792484736 Ma, the … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech News
Alibaba CEO Warns That ‘If Trade Stops, War Starts’
Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba and the second-richest man in China, visited Australia on Saturday. He had a dire warning for Trump and his hardline, anti-globalization ideas about trade: this could be war. Ma was in Melbourne to celebrate the opening of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Australia/New Zealand headquarters. Speaking to attendees at the … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsTrump Has Lots of Options for Inflicting ‘Consequences’ on the Press
President Donald Trump’s new press secretary, Sean Spicer, opened his relationship with the White House press corps over the weekend with a flurry of condemnations for the “deliberately false,” “reckless,” and “shameful and wrong” reporting on the president’s first 24 hours in office. “We’re going to hold the press accountable,” he declared. It was not … Continued
-
Tech News
Leaked Snapchat Code Hints at New Voice and Video Chat Features
Snapchat’s in for a serious makeover, if these screenshots discovered in the mobile app’s existing code are to be believed. A handful of developers at Snapprefs, a group unaffiliated with Snapchat that helps users add more features to the app via the Xposed framework, dug up the screenshots in Snapchat’s code and leaked them to … Continued
By Bryan Lufkin -
Tech News
You Can Buy Fake College Email Accounts For As Little As 16 Cents
Want to pretend you went to the Ivy League? If you have some money and know how to log onto China’s version of eBay, Taobao, it’s not so hard. It is, however, illegal. Researchers from Palo Alto Networks discovered stolen and fake .edu email addresses for sale on China’s largest online marketplace. Some of the … Continued
By Kate Knibbs -
Tech News
Did Google Really Stop Acer From Making a Non-Android Phone? (Update: Yes)
Acer was planning on launching a low-end phone in China running Aliyun OS, a Linux based operating system that’s only relevant to us because it wasn’t Android. The phone was meant to be cheap and affordable and was targeted for China. But that phone is no more. Why? Because Google killed it. What? It’s an … Continued
By Casey Chan
