Slashdot Mirror

"China's top search engine company Baidu made a smart cat shelter in Beijing that uses AI to verify when a cat is approaching and open its door," writes Slashdot reader AmiMoJo. "The cat shelter is heated and also offers cats food and water." Mashable reports: It can accurately identify 174 different cat breeds, as to let them enter and exit as they please. A door will slide open if the camera spots a cat, but it won't work on dogs. Multiple cats can fit inside the space. Another neat camera feature is that it can be also used to detect if the cat is sick -- it can identify four common cat diseases, such as inflammation, skin problems, and physical trauma. Once a cat is identified as needing care, associated volunteers can be informed to come and collect it. "Homeless cats often struggle to survive the winter in Beijing, and even though volunteers feed them their water bowls freeze over in the cold," adds AmiMoJo. "Due to many people living in apartments that don't allow pets, they can't simply bring the cats home."

Baidu has a blog post detailing the shelter and its use of artificial intelligence.

Chinese tech giant Baidu has announced a new autonomous vehicle platform called Project Apollo, which aims to help speed up the development of self-driving cars. "Baidu says the platform encompasses both hardware and software, providing partners with the tech and open-source code needed to help their own vehicles perceive obstacles, plan their routes, and otherwise move around our world," reports The Verge. From the report: Baidu says it will first open up Project Apollo for cars operating in restricted environments in July, before offering it to vehicles driving in simple urban road conditions later this year. That's ahead of a gradual rollout of self-driving features that should see cars operating fully autonomously on highways and regular roads by 2020. The release comes as Baidu moves to position itself at the forefront of the autonomous vehicle industry. The Chinese company has aimed for the ambitious goal of getting a self-driving car to market by 2018, and is challenging rivals such as Google on its home turf, building a team of engineers based in Silicon Valley and scoring relevant permits so it can test vehicles in California.

elwinc writes: Back in mid-May, Baidu, a computer research and services organization in Mainland China, announced impressive results on the ImageNet "Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge," besting results posted by Google and Microsoft. Turns out, Baidu gamed the system, creating 30 accounts and running far more than the 2 tests per week allowed in the contest. Having been caught cheating, Baidu has been banned for a year from the challenge. I believe all competitors are using variations on the convolutional neural network, AKA deep network. Running the test dozens of times per week might allow a competitor to pre-tune parameters for the particular problem, thus producing results that might not generalize to other problems. All of which makes it quite ironic that a Baidu scientist crowed "Our company is now leading the race in computer intelligence!"

hackingbear writes "Reports from overseas (in Chinese) [Google translation] and Hong Kong-based Chinese media report that China appears to have unblocked several sensitive political keywords. Using Baidu.com, the country's leading search engine, users within the mainland border find, in Chinese, uncensored web page links and images using keywords like Tiananmen and 'June 4'. (Readers can click on the first one to view the images.) Given that the unblocking of these sensitive keywords comes one week after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao publicly denounced left-wing leader Bo Xilai's movement of 'striking down the ganster while reviving the red culture' as going down the path of Cultural Revolution, it could signal the silent start of a major political change."

hackingbear writes "Reports from overseas (in Chinese) [Google translation] and Hong Kong-based Chinese media report that China appears to have unblocked several sensitive political keywords. Using Baidu.com, the country's leading search engine, users within the mainland border find, in Chinese, uncensored web page links and images using keywords like Tiananmen and 'June 4'. (Readers can click on the first one to view the images.) Given that the unblocking of these sensitive keywords comes one week after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao publicly denounced left-wing leader Bo Xilai's movement of 'striking down the ganster while reviving the red culture' as going down the path of Cultural Revolution, it could signal the silent start of a major political change."

SkeptOlympics writes "A new chapter in the ongoing controversy surrounding China's women's gymnastics team opened today, as search engine hacker stryde.hax found surviving copies of official registration documents issued by China's General Administration of Sport of China. The incriminating documents, expunged by censors from the official site and from Google's document cache, still appear in the document translation cache of Chinese search giant Baidu, here (1) and here (2), showing the age of one of China's gold medal winning gymnasts to be 14 instead of 16, the minimum age for competition presented on her government-issued passport. Now that official government documentation is available, how long will the IOC be able to keep a lid on this scandal?" I imagine the answer is "Forever."

SkeptOlympics writes "A new chapter in the ongoing controversy surrounding China's women's gymnastics team opened today, as search engine hacker stryde.hax found surviving copies of official registration documents issued by China's General Administration of Sport of China. The incriminating documents, expunged by censors from the official site and from Google's document cache, still appear in the document translation cache of Chinese search giant Baidu, here (1) and here (2), showing the age of one of China's gold medal winning gymnasts to be 14 instead of 16, the minimum age for competition presented on her government-issued passport. Now that official government documentation is available, how long will the IOC be able to keep a lid on this scandal?" I imagine the answer is "Forever."

An anonymous reader points to a story at PC Authority, which begins: "Music industry representatives have warned advertisers to stop supporting Baidu, China's largest search engine, because they believe it is encouraging music piracy. Baidu is the largest source of pirated music in China, according to the representatives, who describe the company as 'incorrigible.' The Chinese firm's music search engine is accessed through what is described as a prominent link on the company's home page."

Billosaur writes "New Scientist is reporting that Baidu, China's largest search engine, is launching its own version of Wikipedia. The site, Baidupedia, differs from the more well-known Wikipedia in that it is self-censoring." From the article: "Unlike Wikipedia, which allows anyone to create and modify entries, Baidupedia is censored by the company to avoid offending the Chinese government. Entries to the encyclopaedia must first pass a filtering system before being added to the site. Baidupedia bars users from including any 'malicious evaluation of the current national system', any 'attack on government institutions', and prevents the 'promotion of a dispirited or negative view of life'."

ackthpt writes "Could China be where the battle for top search engine is waged? Reuters is carrying an article on the play for the Chinese search engine market. Already the second largest internet market in the world, there are estimated 80 million users in China and the number growing fast. Yahoo's acquisition 3721.com, Google-styled Baidu.com and Zhongsou.com are already poised and profitable. Where is Google? Blocked at one time, Google has made its way into China. Their handy cached pages are not available, but they do offer the Ad Words service in chinese to lure business. Those unfamiliar with China's rapid adoption of the internet might like to read up on the success of DangDang.Com an online bookseller, on the BBC, where it's noted that houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access. Thanks to China coming in where many growing pains, suffered by the west, have already passed or obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace."