China’s Asteroid And Comet Hunter Probe Unfurls A ‘solar Wing’

Asia in brief China’s space agency has revealed its Tianwen 2 probe has unfurled a “solar wing.”

The mission launched in May on a course that will take it to remote rocks – the “quasi moon” 469219 Kamo’oalewa and comet 311P/PanSTARRS.

China’s National Space Administration last Friday published its first update on the mission and reported that after eight days in orbit the craft was three million kilometers from Earth. The update also mentions deployment of a “solar wing” – a circular array of flexible solar panels. Here’s a pic of the wing, snapped by one of the probe’s cameras.

The Tianwen 2 probe’s ‘solar wing’ – click to enlarge

The image above is the first China has shared from the mission.

May there be many more!

Hitachi tries turning its graybeards into AI agents

Japan’s Hitachi Power Solutions is trying to capture the knowledge of its veteran workers so they can be preserved in an AI agent.

According to Japanese outlet Nikkei, the company first used logs and other data produced by its systems to train an AI, before interviewing its veteran workers and conducting ethnographic research.

The result was a “Maintenance Inquiry AI Agent” that workers can query as they troubleshoot the company’s kit.

China’s censors ‘delete first, review later’

The army of censors China employs to keep its internet free of forbidden content are told to delete content before reviewing it, according to a report from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

The broadcaster accessed leaked documents from inside Beijing’s censorship operation and found documents that appear to be training material for censors. Those docs include instructions to remove content depicting state violence, and examples of forbidden text, images and video content.

However, censors may not need to consult those lists, as the leaked trove also included an internal memo suggesting a “delete first, review later” approach to censorship.

China’s censors are always especially busy ahead of the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. This year they may have been busier still, as Chinese anti-censorship organization GreatFire and the Human Rights Museum conducted a project to make information about the massacre visible to Chinese netizens.

Equinix acquires Filipino datacenters

Equinix last week announced it had acquired three datacenters from Filipino company Total Information Managemen.

The three facilities are all in Manila and have a combined capacity of 1,000 cabinets, and land for further expansion.

The newest of the three, named MN2, provides 500 cabinets of capacity.

“Acquiring these data centers enables Equinix to immediately support local and global customers looking to expand into the Philippines,” the company said.

Samsung adopts Cline AI coding tool

Korean media report that Samsung’s Device eXperience division has adopted the Cline AI coding assistant.

The division creates Samsung’s mobile devices, home appliances, and televisions.

Cline works alongside Microsoft’s VS Code, making its adoption a nice hint about how Samsung creates its products.

If your next Samsung isn’t so great, maybe blame vibe coding?

AWS opens Taiwan region

Amazon Web Services last week opened a region in Taiwan.

The ap-east-2 region offers three availability zones – a sensible precaution given Taiwan frequently experiences earthquakes that disrupt tech companies. ®

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