The Download: a novel form of censorship in China, and a self-taught robot dog

Imagine you are working on your novel on your home computer. It's nearly finished; you have already written approximately one million words. All of a sudden, the online word processing software tells you that you can no longer open the draft because it contains illegal information. Within an instant, all your words are lost. This is what happened in June to a Chinese novelist writing under the alias Mitu.