"The development of any significant technological product is inseparable from the system and environment in which it operates," said Xu Chenggang, a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions. He cited TikTok's Chinese-language sister app Douyin as the sort of innovation that Chinese companies might be unable to achieve in the future because of government limitations on the industry. "Once the open environment is gone, it will be challenging to create such products," he said. If a decade ago China was the wild, wild East for tech entrepreneurship and innovation, it's a very different country now. Starting in the 1990s all of the country's biggest tech companies were private enterprises funded with foreign money.

There Will Be Blood begins nearly in silence. Its stunning opening 20 minutes follow a solitary figure as he struggles through an American wasteland, digging, bleeding, building. In its howling quiet, its violent yet graceful choreography, the film presents an iconic image of the ravages of greed, the inextricable link between the mythology of American exceptionalism and the circuits of capital--a lone tragic hero representing the creation of the American dream as well as its inevitable apocalyptic end. Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 epic begins with one of cinema's greatest depictions of the desire and despair at the heart of American capitalism. But then, so does WALL-E. Nearly everything about the knockout opening of Anderson's masterpiece is also true of Pixar's masterpiece, released in theaters the following year, and, as of this week, the first film from the animation studio to be inducted into the vaunted Criterion Collection.

Scientists have invented a "living" human-like skin for robots that is water-repellent, self-healing, and has a realistic fleshy appearance. As reported by BGR, Japanese scientists used human skin cells to create a "living skin equivalent" that works in a similar way to human skin. The lab-made skin successfully generated the look and touch of real human skin, and as such, it was found to repel water and repair itself when injured with minor wounds and abrasions, much like living organisms. The researchers published a paper on the experiment in the journal Matter, where they explained how they mixed collagen and human dermal fibroblasts to create a skin solution. They then submerged a robotic finger into the substance and witnessed the material tightly conform to the three-joined robotic body part to give the look of a real human finger.

I've started a Newsletter for quantum computing news, if this field interests you, you can subscribe here. I cannot continue to write without tips, sponsorship and community support. A burgeoning quantum-computing ecosystem and emerging business use cases promise to create significant value for industries--if executives prepare for it and depending on how quantum computing evolves on the Cloud. The early 2020s have mostly seen a justification for the hype of Quantum computing with the in-company innovation teams we used to see a decade earlier when blockchain first came on the scene. The different is Quantum computing has more synergy with artificial intelligence.

KUNSHAN, China--Five years ago, a group of Duke University scientists developed a pioneering gigapixel camera to provide long-range surveillance for the U.S. Navy through a sponsorship from the Pentagon. The technology, never picked up by the U.S. government, is now being used by Chinese police to identify people from nearly a football field away, after lead Duke researcher David Brady moved to China in 2016 to kick-start his business. China's easier access to startup funding, manufacturing supply chain and burgeoning demand for high-tech cameras attracted Mr. Brady, whose original venture in the U.S. failed to win over financial backers and customers. Within two years of the move to China, his company obtained enough funding to build its first commercial camera. The project's shift east offers insight into how China is emerging as a global player in pioneering technologies, including artificial intelligence.

Researchers at Facebook shut down an artificial intelligence (AI) program after it created its own language, Digital Journal reports. The system developed code words to make communication more efficient and researchers took it offline when they realized it was no longer using English. The incident, after it was revealed in early July, puts in perspective Tesla CEO Elon Musk's warnings about AI. "AI is the rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive," Musk said at a meeting of U.S. National Governors Association in July. "Because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it'll be too late." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called Musk's warnings "pretty irresponsible," prompting Musk to respond that Zuckerberg's understanding of AI and its implications is "limited."

Researches at Facebook shut down an artificial intelligence (AI) program after it created its own language, Digital Journal reports. The system developed code words to make communication more efficient and researchers took it offline when they realized it was no longer using English. The incident, after it was revealed in early July, puts in perspective Elon Musk's warnings about AI. "AI is the rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive," Musk said at the meet of US National Governors Association. "Because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it'll be too late." When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Musk's warnings are "pretty irresponsible," Musk responded that Zuckerberg's "understanding of the subject is limited."

An Australian start-up has unveiled an Artificial Intelligence-powered earphone able to instantly translate conversations in eight languages, WIRED reports. Speaking at the United Nations' AI for Good Summit in Geneva, Sydney-based Lingmo International announced that the earpiece-- called Translate One2One-- would be available for purchase starting in July, for the relatively affordable price of $179 (£140.) The device does not need an internet or Bluetooth connection in order to work: it is understood that, as long as both speakers are wearing the earpiece, One2One should provide translation across English, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German and Chinese. While the idea may sound (babel)fishy, Lingmo has quite a convincing list of high-profile partners to back its claims up. Chief among them is IBM, whose AI technology Watson is at the core of the translating device.

Dr. Engelbart died on Tuesday at 88 at his home in Atherton, Calif. His wife, Karen O'Leary Engelbart, said the cause was kidney failure. Computing was in its infancy when Dr. Engelbart entered the field. Computers were ungainly room-size calculating machines that could be used by only one person at a time. Someone would feed them information in stacks of punched cards and then wait hours for a printout of answers. Interactive computing was a thing of the future, or in science fiction.

Researchers at Disney Research have invented a one-legged hopping robot that can bounce 19 times without falling over. The project which is lead by Zachary Batts, Jooyung Kim, and Katsu Yamane started off as a computer simulation and ended as a hardware product. The robot's single leg uses a technology called a linear elastic actuator in parallel or LEAP. The robot can jump for about seconds before toppling - or about as long as Tigger can hop on his tail before he crashes into something. The researchers wrote "The LEAP mechanism comprises a voice coil actuator in parallel with two compression springs, which gives our robot passive compliance. An actuated gimbal hip join is realized by two standard servomotors."