This is at the moment’s version of The Download, our weekday publication that gives a every day dose of what’s happening on the planet of know-how.
How the search to kind Chinese on a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete
—This is an excerpt from The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas S. Mullaney, revealed on May 28 by The MIT Press. It has been evenly edited.
When a younger Chinese man sat down at his QWERTY keyboard in 2013 and rattled off an enigmatic string of letters and numbers, his forty-four keystrokes marked the primary steps in a course of often known as “enter” or shuru.
Shuru is the act of getting Chinese characters to seem on a pc monitor or different digital machine utilizing a QWERTY keyboard or trackpad.
The younger man, Huang Zhenyu, was considered one of round 60 contestants within the 2013 National Chinese Characters Typing Competition. His keyboard didn’t allow him to enter these characters straight, nonetheless, and so he entered the quasi-gibberish string of letters and numbers as a substitute: ymiw2klt4pwyy1wdy6…
But Zhenyu’s prizewinning efficiency wasn’t solely noteworthy for his spectacular typing pace—one of many quickest ever recorded. It was additionally premised on the identical form of “extra steps” as the primary Chinese pc in historical past that led to the invention of autocompletion. Read the remainder of the excerpt right here.
If you’re keen on tech in China, why not try a few of our China reporter Zeyi Yang’s latest reporting (and subscribe to his weekly publication China Report!)
+ GPT-4o’s Chinese token-training knowledge is polluted by spam and porn web sites. The drawback, which is probably going due to insufficient knowledge cleansing, may lead to hallucinations, poor efficiency, and misuse. Read the complete story.
+ Why Hong Kong is concentrating on Western Big Tech firms in its ban of a preferred protest tune.
+ Deepfakes of your lifeless family members are a booming Chinese enterprise. People are searching for assist from AI-generated avatars to course of their grief after a member of the family passes away. Read the complete story.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to discover you at the moment’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Election officers need to pre-bunk dangerous on-line campaigns
It’s a bid to stop political hoaxes from ever getting off the bottom. (WP $)
+ Fake information verification instruments are failing in India. (Rest of World)
+ Three know-how traits shaping 2024’s elections. (MIT Technology Review)
2 OpenAI has began coaching the successor to GPT-4
Just weeks after it revealed an up to date model, GPT-4o. (NYT $)
+ OpenAI’s new GPT-4o lets folks work together utilizing voice or video in the identical mannequin. (MIT Technology Review)
3 China is bolstering its nationwide semiconductor fund
To the tune of $48 billion. (WSJ $)
+ It’s the third spherical of the nation’s native chip funding program. (FT $)
+ What’s subsequent in chips. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Nuclear crops are extraordinarily costly to construct
The US wants to be taught how to lower prices with out slicing corners. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to reopen a nuclear energy plant. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Laser techniques may very well be the most effective line of protection in opposition to army drones
The Pentagon is investing in BlueHalo’s AI-powered laser know-how. (Insider $)
+ The US army can be pumping cash into Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. (Wired $)
+ Inside the messy ethics of creating struggle with machines. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Klarna’s advertising campaigns are the product of generative AI
The fintech agency claims the know-how will reserve it $10 million a 12 months. (Reuters)
7 The US has an EV charging drawback
Would-be automotive consumers are nonetheless nervous about investing in EVs. (Wired $)
+ Micro-EVs may provide one resolution. (Ars Technica)
+ Toyota has unveiled new engines appropriate with various fuels. (Reuters)
8 Good luck betting on something that’s not sports activities within the US
The end result of a significant election, for instance. (Vox)
+ How cellular cash supercharged Kenya’s sports activities betting dependancy. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Perfectionist mother and father are Facetuning their kids
It goes with out saying: don’t do that. (NY Mag $)
10 Why a film model of The Sims by no means obtained off the bottom
The beloved online game would make for a critically bizarre cinema spectacle. (The Guardian)
Quote of the day
“Once materialism begins spreading, it could actually have a foul affect on youngsters.”
—Chinese state media Beijing News explains why China has began cracking down on luxurious influencers identified for his or her ostentatious shows of wealth, the Financial Times experiences.
The massive story
Recapturing early web whimsy with HTML
December 2023
Websites weren’t all the time slick digital experiences.
There was a time when browsing the online concerned opening tabs that performed music in opposition to your will and sifting via partitions of textual content on a coloured background. In the 2000s, earlier than Squarespace and social media, web sites have been manifestations of individuality—constructed from scratch utilizing HTML, by customers who had some information of code.
Scattered throughout the online are communities of programmers working to revive this seemingly outdated strategy. And the motion is something however a superficial attraction to retro aesthetics—it’s about celebrating the human contact in digital experiences. Read the complete story.
—Tiffany Ng
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Enjoy this potted historical past of why we are saying okay, and the place it got here from.
+ There is one thing very humorous about Elton John calling The Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa “the rat and the pig.”
+ The better of British press images is all the time price a peruse.
+ I had no concept that Sisqo’s Thong Song used an Eleanor Rigby pattern.
