Posts Tagged ‘China’

GitHub China Gitee

Gitee, China’s answer to GitHub, to review all code by temporarily closing open-source projects to the public

  • China’s largest open-source code platform will temporarily close public repositories to review their contents before opening them up again
  • The policy change, for which no reason was given, comes as Beijing tightens its grip on internet content

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3178323/gitee-chinas-answer-github-review-all-code-temporarily-closing-open

the Chinese government has misunderstood open source.

“It is not about code. It is the community, the people who develop the code,” he said. “If one just copies the code to another platform where nobody contributes to improving it, it’s dead open source.”

Germany China move from Windows to Linux

After Germany, China Now Wants To Ditch Windows & Run Linux On 50 Million PCs!

It’s a big win for the open-source community!

https://fossbytes.com/china-wants-to-run-linux-on-50-million-pcs/

While this is a big win for Linux and open-source software, it’s bad news for laptop/PC manufacturers like Dell, HP, etc., and software companies like Adobe and Microsoft, except Lenovo and Kingsoft. While manufacturers will be driven into the corner to become “foreign” companies, homegrown companies like Lenovo, Huawei, and Kingsoft might see rapid market growth in the forthcoming years.

social media and social credit system

One of China’s biggest social networks is revealing user locations to head off ‘bad behaviour’

https://www.techradar.com/news/one-of-chinas-biggest-social-networks-is-revealing-user-locations-to-head-off-bad-behaviour

euters reports that Weibo will begin showing the rough locations of its users using IP addresses to combat “bad behaviour” online. The locations show up on both profiles and posts.

Chinese citizens have long resorted to using VPNs and other privacy tools to help either access non-Chinese services or speak freely online and you can see why.

In a similar view to the Panopticon, visibly showing users that the service knows where they are will lead to self-censorship, reducing the strain on Chinese censors to cover an internet with hundreds of millions of users.

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more on social credit system in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=china+social

Sweden response to propaganda

Sweden launches ‘Psychological Defence Agency’ to counter propaganda from Russia, China and Iran

The new agency is tasked with countering disinformation and boosting the population’s resilience in the face of possible influence operation

https://www.mpf.se/en/

The agency’s main mission is the coordination and development of agencies’ and other actors’ activities within Sweden’s psychological defence.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3383c0a2-6d94-11ec-a1b8-3009dadbed4f

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2022/01/05/sweden-launches-psychological-defense-agency-to-counter-disinformation/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/01/04/sweden-launches-psychological-defence-agency-counter-complex/

College Students Privacy

Today’s College Students Care About Privacy — Despite Some of Their Online Actions

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-11-02-today-s-college-students-care-about-privacy-despite-some-of-their-online-actions

a new report from the nonprofit Future of Privacy Forum, which analyzed recent research about young adults from the U.S., China, Germany and Japan.

a study from Indiana University detailed the fears college students have about and the ways they adapt to the fact that they may be photographed at any moment by friends, classmates or even strangers.

Another worry described in the Future of Privacy Forum report is about a type of digital harassment known as “doxxing,”

Many students are loath to share biometric information with colleges and are wary about tools like facial recognition software.

EU and China higher ed changes

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20211119103816587

“Our line is very clear: until we have clear responses from the other side on how these aspects will be treated, we are not going to support our companies through our supporting programmes (such as Horizon) in innovation with Chinese counterparts – whether these are companies or universities or research organisations

U.S. Ed Tech Spending $27.6 Billion in 2021

U.S. Ed Tech Spending to Reach $27.6 Billion in 2021

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/10/07/report-u.s-ed-tech-spending-to-reach-27.6-billion-in-2021.aspx

The report forecast China’s growth in ed tech spending to be 15.6 percent over the same period, reaching $34.2 billion by 2026. Japan, Canada and Germany are all expected to see double-digit growht in ed tech spending over the report period as well: Japan at 14.5 percent, Canada at 14 percent and Germany at 11.9 percent CAGR.

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More on educational technology in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Educational+technology

the Nonsense Papers

The Mysterious Case of the Nonsense Papers

A peer-reviewed journal published hundreds of them. Why?

https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-did-a-peer-reviewed-journal-publish-hundreds-of-nonsense-papers

One clue is that the overwhelming majority of the papers were ostensibly written by authors who claim to be affiliated with Chinese institutions. Universities in China often reward researchers for publishing in notable journals listed on the Science Citation Index, in some cases paying them cash bonuses, though China’s science and education ministries have recently tried to crack down on the practice. It’s also long been a requirement that doctoral students at many Chinese universities publish a paper before they graduate.

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China’s Plagiarism Problem

https://www.forbes.com/2010/05/26/china-cheating-innovation-markets-economy-plagiarism.html

Plagiarism and the lack of academic integrity it engenders are intricately connected to the larger debate about intellectual property rights (IPR) in China and the government’s promoted idea of a harmonious society to support stability.

Edtech going global

The Next Wave of Edtech Will Be Very, Very Big — and Global

https://www-edsurge-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2021-07-30-the-next-wave-of-edtech-will-be-very-very-big-and-global

India’s Byju’s

Few companies have tackled the full range of learners since the days when Pearson was touted as the world’s largest learning company. Those that do, however, are increasingly huge (like PowerSchool, which had an IPO this week) and work across international borders.

Chinese education giants, including TAL and New Oriental.

The meteoric rise of Chinese edtech companies has dimmed recently as the Chinese government shifted regulations around online tutoring, in an effort to “protect students’ right to rest, improve the quality of school education and reduce the burden on parents.”

Acquisitions and partnerships are a cornerstone of Byju’s early learning programs: It bought Palo Alto-based Osmo in 2019, which combines digital learning with manipulatives, an approach the companies call “phygital.” For instance: Using a tablet’s camera and Osmo’s artificial intelligence software, the system tracks what a child is doing on a (physical) worksheet and responds accordingly to right and wrong answers. “It’s almost like having a teacher looking over you,
My note: this can be come disastrous when combined with the China’s “social credit” system.

By contrast, Byju’s FutureSchool (launched in the U.S. this past spring) aims to offer one-to-one tutoring sessions starting with coding (based in part on WhiteHat Jr., which it acquired in August 2020) and eventually including music, fine arts and English to students in the U.S., Brazil, the U.K., Indonesia and others. The company has recruited 11,000 teachers in India to staff the sessions

In mid-July, Byju’s bought California-based reading platform Epic for $500 million. That product opens up a path for Byju’s to schools. Epic offers a digital library of more than 40,000 books for students ages 12 and under. Consumers pay about $80 a year for the library. It’s free to schools. Epic says that more than 1 million teachers in 90 percent of U.S. elementary schools have signed up for accounts.

That raises provocative questions for U.S. educators. Among them:

  • How will products originally developed for the consumer market fit the needs of schools, particularly those that serve disadvantaged students?
  • Will there be more development dollars poured into products that appeal to consumers—and less into products that consumers typically skip (say, middle school civics or history curriculum?)
  • How much of an investment will giants such as Byju’s put into researching the effectiveness of its products? In the past most consumers have been less concerned than professional educators about the “research” behind the learning products they buy. Currently Gokulnath says the company most closely tracks metrics such as “engagement” (how much time students spend on the product) and “renewals” (how many customers reup after a year’s use of the product.)
  • How will products designed for home users influence parents considering whether to continue to school at home in the wake of viral pandemics?

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