Baidu’s video site iQiyi adds 37M subscribers in 2018 amid mounting losses

China’s Baidu, which is often compared to Alphabet’s Google, is showing no signs of slowing down its pace of betting on video content as its core advertising unit feels the squeeze from rivals. The company’s latest financial results show its video streaming business iQiyi posted a net loss of 9.1 billion yuan or $1.3 billion in 2018, […]

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Microsoft’s Bing blocked in China

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Microsoft-owned search engine Bing has been blocked in China.

“We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Mashable.

The news was first reported by the Financial Times. Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator China Unicom told one of the FT’s “two sources familiar with the matter” that Bing had been blocked after a government order.  

Chinese mainland users had reportedly posted on social media about their inability to access Bing’s cn.bing.com, while those outside the country could still access it (we could load the page in Australia and the U.S.).  Read more…

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Put Alexa and a JBL speaker in your ceiling with this clever LED downlight

This light makes the smarthome even more accessible. Installed as any other ceiling downlight,the June AI downlight features Amazon Alexa through an integrated JBL speakers. There’s a light in there too. The idea is great: make the smarthome invisible. Instead of having an Amazon Echo sitting on a table, this device sits in a person’s […]

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Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs

Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy. The problem for this subset […]

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Google is reportedly planning a censorship-friendly search service for China

Google’s search service could be poised to make a dramatic return to China next year, according to an explosive report from The Intercept. Google yanked its search service from China in 2010 in the face of pressure over censorship, but now the publication reports that it has developed a censored version that could launch in […]

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Microsoft advances several of its hosted artificial intelligence algorithms

 Microsoft Cognitive Services is home to the company’s hosted artificial intelligence algorithms. Today, the company announced advances to several Cognitive Services tools including Microsoft Custom Vision Service, the Face API and Bing Entity Search . Joseph Sirosh, who leads the Microsoft’s cloud AI efforts, defined Microsoft Cognitive Services in a company blog post announcing… Read More

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Microsoft looks to make Bing results smarter with new AI-powered features and Reddit partnership

 At a special AI-focused event today in San Francisco, Microsoft announced a number of feature updates to Bing that it hopes will make results smarter by leveraging the company’s AI research, as well as a new partnership with Reddit. Read More

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Crunch Report | The tech companies helping to educate the public on fake news and how to get free Postmates Unlimited

 Today’s Stories  These tech companies want to get rid of fake news Say goodbye forever to Facebook app invites Apple is giving out free Postmates Unlimited Mashable sells to Ziff Davis Virgin Hyperloop One goes to India Credits Written by: Sarah Buhr Hosted by: Sarah Buhr Filmed by: Joe Zolnoski Edited by: John Murillo Notes: Tito’s continues his journey out in the Outback… Read More

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