chongqing
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Baidu's robotaxis can now operate without a safety driver in the car
The company says it's running the first fully driverless service in China.
HP laptop comes with webcam standard, peek at Chinese factory as bonus (video)
Most tours of Chinese factories at least give workers a heads-up that they'll be on camera. Not so the exposé that HP inadvertently gave one of its Swedish customers. Reddit user Malplace opened a new laptop to find that a 3-minute webcam video of the factory floor at HP's contractor, Quanta, was sitting in Windows' My Documents folder. If you're looking for scandal from the footage, though, you won't find it here: Chongqing Manufacturing City's staff are shown dutifully moving the assembly line along in what looks like fair conditions, if exceptionally repetitive. The instance is most likely just a rare gaffe during testing at a manufacturer that pumps out millions of HP PCs every quarter, so we'll cut Quanta some slack. It's still a rare glimpse into a side of technology that's considered off-limits for much of the buying public.
500,000 surveillance cameras to oversee Chongqing, China
Whoa, Nelly -- this one's not going to sit well with a certain sect. While the Chinese city of Chongqing has been planning this initiative for some time, we're just now starting to understand the sheer magnitude of what'll be built over the next two to three years. Cisco and HP -- two names that are no doubt familiar to those reading this page -- are apparently in cahoots with the nation in a way that overshoots prior expectations by some amount. According to figures gathered by The Wall Street Journal, a whopping half-million surveillance cameras are being shipped over to keep watch across the city, with the awkwardly-named Peaceful Chongqing project giving the government unprecedented views of its citizens. Critics are wondering why Cisco and HP aren't being held responsible for whatever China ends up doing with this equipment, but the loophole here is a fairly obvious one; while it's definitely not kosher for US firms to ship fingerprinting equipment to China, shipping everyday technology like cameras isn't taboo. Yet, anyway. As you'd expect, both Cisco and HP seem confident that it's not their responsibility to pay attention to what happens to the devices they ship, and if it's something you'd like to immerse yourself in, those links below are there to help.
Great Firewall of China getting a small cloud-based silver lining
China, it seems, is getting ready to punch a cloud-shaped hole in its infamous Great Firewall. A massive six square mile office park currently being built in the southwestern city of Chongqing is set to escape the filtering that dominates the rest of the company's internet access. The area, affectionately known as the "Cloud Zone," will be home to technology companies and Chinese startups that will presumably require free access to sites like Twitter and Facebook to do their jobs. Freedom, after all, is just another word for being able to update your status from your cubicle.
