The US technology company Google pointed out that the Hong Kong government made 56 requests to remove content in the second half of last year, involving 183 items, of which 55 items were accused of "endangering national security", including web pages and cloud storage related to the "Yangcun" series of books. Google did not remove nearly half of the items requested by the Hong Kong government. Tong Jiahua, a member of the Hong Kong Executive Council and a senior barrister, told this station that Hong Kong should seriously consider whether to legislate and regulate. The worst scenario is that Google withdraws from the Hong Kong market. Freedom of expression and information.
Google's latest " Information Disclosure Report " shows that the Hong Kong government made 56 "removal requests" from July to December 2022, involving 183 items, of which 55 related to "national security" and 52 related to " privacy and security," and the rest pertain to "impersonation of another's identity," "fraud," "regulated goods and services," and more. Of the 183 projects, 128 projects were requested to be removed by the Hong Kong police.
Google also disclosed that two of the removal requests came from the Hong Kong police, involving webpages and cloud drive folders containing books in the "Yangcun" series. Google said no action was taken on the associated Drive folder, and the site could no longer find relevant content.
On Monday (8th) in Hong Kong, our reporter still found a Google Drive folder related to "Yangcun" from Google.
Google's report shows that among the 183 items that were requested to be removed, 48% of the items (88) Google did not take removal action; a total of 44% have been removed, including removal due to laws and policies; the rest are Insufficient information and content not found.
Hong Kong Police: Do not comment on individual cases Citizens should draw a clear line from suspected illegal acts
This station inquired about the incident with the Hong Kong police on Monday, and received a reply that it would not comment on individual cases. It also pointed out that when investigating various types of cases, relevant persons or organizations (including Internet service providers) will be requested to provide information or provide cooperation, and the relevant requests will be carried out in accordance with relevant laws, procedures and codes. According to the law, any person who publishes, publishes, sells, offers for sale, distributes, displays or reproduces seditious publications; or imports seditious publications; or possesses seditious publications without lawful excuse commits an offence.
The police also appealed to citizens to "draw a clear line from illegal acts suspected of violating the "Hong Kong National Security Law" or other Hong Kong laws, so as to avoid taking unnecessary legal risks."
Tang Jiahua: Hong Kong can imitate the British legislation Google or withdraw from the local market
Member of the Executive Council and Senior Counsel Tang Jiahua told this station on Monday that there are still large "loopholes" in Hong Kong's laws, and there are not enough procedures and rights to deal with related illegal projects. He believes that Hong Kong can seriously consider imitating the United Kingdom and enacting the "Cyber Security Law". If network service providers violate the law, they may be subject to global fines. However, such practices may cause technology giants including Google to withdraw from the local market.
Tang Jiahua said: I think it's mainly living habits. I don't use Gmail, but Yahoo. Is it okay? Yes, I don't use Facebook, can I use WeChat? Yes, no one will die, but are Hong Kong people used to it? Eventually it's something you get used to. But from another perspective, if Hong Kong does not use Google, but uses Facebook, can it be the same as the mainland? Does it give people the impression that "is Hong Kong becoming the mainland?" and "where is the one country, two systems?" These are relatively sensitive issues.
Does Google's withdrawal from Hong Kong affect business? Tang Jiahua: We can "over the wall"
Once Google withdraws from Hong Kong, will it affect foreign or Hong Kong people's business? Tang Jiahua pointed out that this problem can be overcome, and many people in the Mainland use the method of "climbing the wall".
Tang Jiahua said: At the beginning, I may not be used to it, but it is definitely not an insurmountable obstacle. There are many foreign businessmen in the mainland, and they can handle it. Everyone knows that there are many skills and technologies to overcome the wall, and there are many people in the mainland. We are using Google. We use Google all the time when we go back to the mainland. We can use over-the-wall, VPN, etc. I am just reminding everyone to handle this issue carefully. It is not a law that can be legislated, or that there is no need to legislate. I think this is a serious matter. The problem.
The Hong Kong government has repeatedly stated that Article 23 of the Basic Law will be enacted by the end of this year or early next year at the latest. Will "cyber security" be enacted together by then? Tang Jiahua pointed out that it is not yet known whether the 23 legislation will touch "network security". For example, once "state secrets" are disclosed or carried out online, it may be illegal, but he believes that it will not be a law that comprehensively regulates the Internet.
Commentary: Concerned about the Hong Kong government losing its mind and "blocking the Internet"
Current affairs commentator Sang Pu, who is a lawyer, told this station on the same day that the Hong Kong government has repeatedly used the "National Security Law" as an excuse to ask Google to delete content, questioning that the Hong Kong government wants Google to become a "white glove" for implementing the "Hong Kong National Security Law" . In the case of "Yangcun" this time, Samp said that Google drive is not an exempt system in Hong Kong, and even though the authorities requested to delete it, the practice could not "fix it all". He is worried that the Hong Kong government will take advantage of the incident to "block the Internet".
Sang Pu said: It is only a matter of time before leaving Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is not as good as Singapore, and many investments are safe and have a high degree of freedom. Services, regardless of VPN, network search, cloud, drive service restrictions? Partial or full restrictions? This is a considerable challenge for Hong Kong's future.
Sang Pu pointed out that once Hong Kong is "blocked from the Internet", it will become another mainland city, with freedom of speech and information circulation on par with China.
Google has been repeatedly involved in Hong Kong political turmoil
In recent years, Google has been involved in political turmoil in Hong Kong many times. For example, in international sports events in which the Hong Kong team participated, the organizers repeatedly broadcast the wrong national anthem, which aroused strong dissatisfaction from the Hong Kong government. "March" was "topped", but was rejected by Google. The incident escalated to the diplomatic level. The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded by saying that it "supports the Hong Kong government in firmly safeguarding the dignity of the national anthem."
Twitter intends to delete inactive accounts for several years
Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the social media platform will delete accounts that have been inactive for several years.
He added that users on the micro-blogging platform may see a decrease in the number of followers.
According to Twitter's policy, users have to log in to their account at least once every 30 days to avoid being permanently deleted because it has been inactive for a long time.
Earlier this month, Musk "threatened" to re-award the NPR account to another company after it stopped publishing content on its 52 official accounts in protest of a Twitter tag that implied government interference in its editorial content.
Last month, Twitter removed the blue check mark from the profiles of thousands of people, including celebrities, journalists and prominent politicians.
And Musk made accounts verified with a blue tick with an opt-in, in a move he said would address the problem of fake accounts on the social media platform.
Source: Russia may use driverless trucks during its military operation
In the area of the special military operation, driverless trucks may be used to transport ammunition and humanitarian goods and evacuate the wounded, said Yevgeny Dodorov, CEO of the Android Technologies Foundation.
Dodorov added , "We are currently working in the field of constructing driverless trucks that can operate on rough roads for the benefit of the Russian forces operating in the special military operation area, and perhaps in the near future we will see them actually operating there. This task is very complex, as there is no infrastructure for navigation and communications." To ensure continuous monitoring of the condition and route of transport, but nevertheless these tasks can be solved.
Dodorov stressed that today, in the area of the special military operation, there is a wide range of tasks that unmanned trucks can perform, including the delivery of ammunition and timber, the transportation of medicine and food, and the evacuation of the wounded.
According to him, a prototype of a driverless truck is currently being tested at an industrial enterprise, where "this truck is effectively showing itself."
The Executive Director recalled that some time ago in Russia a draft law “On Highly Automated Transportation” was published, which regulates the rules for the use of unmanned vehicles.
Artificial intelligence converts what mice see in real time into a video clip using brain signals
Scientists have reconstructed a black-and-white video from rat brain activity data that was recorded, then analyzed, using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.
The team at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can interpret the signals of the rodents' brains.
The algorithm, called CEBRA, was trained to correlate the neural activity of specific frames in video clips, so that it could then predict and reconstruct what the mouse was looking at.
The news comes shortly after researchers at the University of Texas at Austin used artificial intelligence to convert people's thoughts into text in real time.
Dr Mackenzie Mathis, lead researcher on the study, said: 'In the future, because CEBRA is not limited to vision, we believe it is a powerful tool for brain machine interfaces. For example, it could be used to control computer indicators in patients who are unable to move, or it could be used to "To help provide visual sensations for the visually impaired if combined with real-time brain stimulation. Of course, I can't quite predict this and the years away, but these are the areas I'm happy to see people use CEBRA for."
In the study, published in the journal Nature, scientists trained CEBRA using movies viewed by mice and their brain activity in real time.
Some activity was measured directly using electrode probes inserted into the visual cortex of the brain. The rest was collected using light sensors on genetically engineered mice whose neurons turn green when activated.
Using this data, CEBRA identified brain signals associated with specific movie frames.
This exercise showed that AI can predict the correct image 95% of the time within a second.
The neuroscientists also trained the AI on individual mouse brain data to test whether reconstructions using the individual data worked better. The AI tool predicted the frames of the movie being watched with an accuracy of between 50% and 75%.
"We're not projecting every pixel, we're predicting the frame. It's going to be a 1/900 chance level, so we think an accuracy of over 95% is very exciting. But that decoding is something we plan to do next," explained Dr. Mathis.
In an example video, the mouse can be seen watching a 1960s black and white film clip of a man running towards a car and opening the trunk.
A separate screen shows what CEBRA thinks the mouse is looking at, which is an almost identical, if more grainy, video.
The algorithm is able to do this using data from just 1 percent of the neurons in a mouse's visual cortex, which equates to about 0.5 million neurons.
"We wanted to show how little data, both in terms of movie clips and neurological data, we can use. This makes it more realistic for future clinical applications," said Dr. Mathis.
It is worth noting that the algorithm can work in real time, so it takes less than 1 second for the model to predict the entire video.
Engineers in the Russian Urals region are developing a new tactical drone
Young engineers from the Ural region of Russia have developed the Uber strike tactical FPV drone.
This was reported by the Russian agency "Tass", quoting a spokesman for the manufacturer of the drone.
"The main purpose of our innovation is to direct air strikes at the enemy in its tactical depth, in order to isolate the area of military operations," the spokesman said.
He explained that the drone could carry RPG-7 grenades and RKG-3M grenades, as well as high-explosive charges.
It is noteworthy that the Russian media had reported earlier that the Russian state company "Rostec" had designed a communication system equipped with artificial intelligence that would be used by the fifth generation fighters. As for the private Russian company "Lobanov", it has developed remote-controlled snipers that can be used against small-sized drones. The Russian army units will receive these automatic snipers for experimental use in the special military operation.
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