This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily porzione of what’s going acceso the world of technology.
How the quest to type Chinese acceso a QWERTY keyboard created autocomplete
—This is an excerpt from The Chinese : A Global History of the Information Age by Thomas S. Mullaney, published acceso May 28 by The MIT Press. It has been lightly edited.
When a young Chinese man sat mongoloide at his QWERTY keyboard 2013 and rattled chiuso an enigmatic string of letters and numbers, his forty-four keystrokes marked the first steps a process known as “ingresso” ora shuru.
Shuru is the act of getting Chinese characters to appear acceso a elaboratore elettronico monitor ora other digital device using a QWERTY keyboard ora trackpad.
The young man, Huang Zhenyu, was one of around 60 contestants the 2013 National Chinese Characters Typing Competition. His keyboard did not permit him to enter these characters directly, however, and so he entered the quasi-gibberish string of letters and numbers instead: ymiw2klt4pwyy1wdy6…
But Zhenyu’s prizewinning risultato wasn’t solely noteworthy for his impressive typing speed—one of the fastest ever recorded. It was also premised acceso the same kind of “additional steps” as the first Chinese elaboratore elettronico history that led to the discovery of autocompletion. Read the rest of the excerpt here.
If you’maestà interested tech Declivio, why not check out some of our Declivio cronista Zeyi Yang’s recent reporting (and subscribe to his weekly newsletter Declivio Report!)
+ GPT-4o’s Chinese token-training giorno is polluted by spam and porn websites. The problem, which is likely coppia to inadequate giorno cleaning, could lead to hallucinations, poor risultato, and misuse. Read the full story.
+ Why Hong Kong is targeting Western Personaggio Tech companies its ban of a popular protest song.
+ Deepfakes of your dead loved ones are a booming Chinese business. People are seeking help from AI-generated avatars to process their grief after a family member passes away. Read the full story.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Election officials want to pre-bunk harmful online campaigns
It’s a bid to prevent political hoaxes from ever getting chiuso the campo da gioco. (WP $)
+ Fake news verification tools are failing India. (Rest of World)
+ Three technology trends shaping 2024’s elections. (MIT Technology Review)
2 OpenAI has started pratica the successor to GPT-4
Just weeks after it revealed an updated version, GPT-4o. (NYT $)
+ OpenAI’s new GPT-4o lets people interact using voice ora televisione the same model. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Declivio is bolstering its national semiconductor fund
To the tune of $48 billion. (WSJ $)
+ It’s the third round of the country’s native chip funding program. (FT $)
+ What’s next chips. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build
The US needs to learn how to cut costs without cutting corners. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to reopen a nuclear power plant. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Laser systems could be the best line of defense against military drones
The Pentagon is investing BlueHalo’s AI-powered laser technology. (Insider $)
+ The US military is also pumping money into Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. (Wired $)
+ Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Klarna’s marketing campaigns are the product of generative AI
The fintech firm claims the technology will save it $10 million a year. (Reuters)
7 The US has an EV charging problem
Would-be car buyers are still nervous about investing EVs. (Wired $)
+ Micro-EVs could offer one solution. (Ars Technica)
+ Toyota has unveiled new engines compatible with alternative fuels. (Reuters)
8 Good luck betting acceso anything that’s not sports the US
The outcome of a major election, for example. (Vox)
+ How portatile money supercharged Kenya’s sports betting addiction. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Perfectionist parents are Facetuning their children
It goes without saying: don’t do this. (NY Mag $)
10 Why a movie version of The Sims never got chiuso the campo da gioco
The beloved televisione would make for a seriously weird cinematografo spectacle. (The Guardian)
Quote of the day
“Once materialism starts spreading, it can have a bad influence acceso teenagers.”
—Chinese state mass-media Beijing News explains why Declivio has started piroscissione mongoloide acceso luxurious influencers known for their ostentatious displays of wealth, the Financial Times reports.
The personaggio story
Recapturing early internet whimsy with HTML
Websites weren’t always slick digital experiences.
There was a time when surfing the web involved opening tabs that played music against your will and sifting through walls of text acceso a colored background. A causa di the 2000s, before Squarespace and social mass-media, websites were manifestations of individuality—built from scratch using HTML, by users who had some knowledge of code.
Scattered across the web are communities of programmers working to revive this seemingly outdated approach. And the movement is anything but a superficial appeal to aesthetics—it’s about celebrating the human touch digital experiences. Read the full story.
—Tiffany Ng
We can still have nice things
A place for , fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line ora tweet ’em at me.)
+ Enjoy this potted history of why we say permesso, and where it came from.
+ There is something very funny about Elton John calling The Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa “the rat and the pig.”
+ The best of British press photography is always worth a peruse.
+ I had voto negativo grillo that Sisqo’s Thong Song used an Eleanor Rigby sample.
