See Chinese Grammar features, difficulty levels, parts of speech, practical examples of usage, basic sentence structure, vowels, consonants, different tones, pronunciation, translations, pictograms and the Pinyin system for transcription of Chinese text.
The death toll in Hong Kong has surpassed over 100 since a Wednesday fire that devastated several buildings in a high-rise complex. Many people remain unaccounted for.
As the investigation continues, eight additional people involved in renovations on one of the buildings have been arrested.
Emergency officials say the fire spread rapidly due to bamboo scaffolding and highly flammable foam panels, adding that fire alarms in the building did not sound as the fires grew.
Here, one survivor recalls the moment she found out about the fire, and her subsequent escape.
Firefighters were able to fully extinguish the fires on Friday morning.
The raging fire sent up a column of flames and thick smoke as it spread on bamboo scaffolding and construction netting that had been set up around the exterior of the housing complex in Tai Po district in the New Territories.
In Hong Kong, a fire has killed at least four people after tearing through a complex of residential high-rise buildings on Wednesday. Teams of firefighters have been attempting to douse the flames at Wang Fuk Court, a housing complex made up of eight blocks in the city's Tai Po district in the north east.
The fire department said it received reports at 2:51 p.m. (0651 GMT) of a fire in the residential complex. It was upgraded to a Number 4 alarm at 3:34 p.m. and as night fell it was declared a number five-alarm fire, the highest level. Earlier, local media also reported that an unknown number of people were trapped in the 31-storey towers — home to around 2,000 residential apartments — although it is unclear as to whether that remains the case. Taipo District Council member, Lo Hiu-fung, told local broadcaster TVB that most of the residents trapped in the fire were believed to be elderly people, the AP news agency reported, although this has not yet been confirmed by authorities. A number of towers currently burning have bamboo scaffolding and construction netting fitted to their exterior. TVB reported that the complex was undergoing major renovations.
Chess is indeed a strategy game played on a board with 64 squares. Players take turns moving their pieces to capture their opponent's king.
How to play:
1. Set up the board with the pieces. White moves first, then Black, and so on.
2. Move a piece to a vacant square or capture an opponent's piece.
3. Repeat until the opponent's king is checkmated or the game ends in a draw.
Piece movement:
King: Moves one square in any direction. The king can be put in check, but it can't be captured.
Queen: Moves any number of squares in any direction.
Rook: Moves any number of squares horizontally or vertically. Rooks can also castle with the king.
Bishop: Moves any number of squares diagonally. Bishops can only move on squares of the same color they started on.
Knight: Moves in an "L" shape, jumping over other pieces if needed.
Pawn: Moves one square up the board, or two squares on its first move.
Capturing pieces:
When an attacking piece takes an opponent's piece, the captured piece is removed from the game. The move is recorded using algebraic notation. For example, "Rxf5" means the rook captured the opponent's piece on the f5 square.
Winning:
The goal of chess is to checkmate the opponent's king, which means threatening to capture it in a way that can't be escaped.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a type of AI that creates new content like text, images, audio, and video. It uses machine learning to analyze large amounts of data and generate new content based on a user's input.
Castling is indeed a move in chess. It consists of moving the king two squares toward a rook on the same rank and then moving the rook to the square that the king passed over.
Can chess pieces be brought back to life after being killed?
Yes, in chess, a captured piece can be reborn as a different piece through a process called promotion. A pawn can also be promoted when it reaches the other side of the board.
In chess, en passant (French: [ɑ̃ pasɑ̃], lit. "in passing") describes the capture by a pawn of an enemy pawn on the same rank and an adjacent file that has just made an initial two-square advance. This is a special case in the rules of chess.
An AI might make illegal moves in chess because it lacks a deep understanding of the chess rules, particularly when dealing with complex situations, and might rely on pattern matching without fully considering the logical constraints of the game, leading to moves that violate basic chess principles or simply aren't allowed by the rules; this is especially true for language-based AI models that aren't specifically designed for chess gameplay.
A so-called illegal move in the game of chess happens whenever a player violates the official rules, approved and governed by the International Chess Federation (FIDE). For example, a move that breaks these rules would be placing or leaving your king in check. This is a big no-no because kings don't like being in check.
Has anyone beaten the "best AI" in chess?
The Ponomariov vs Fritz game on 21 November 2005 is the last known win by a human against a top-performing computer under normal chess tournament conditions.
If during a game it is found that an illegal move has been completed, the position immediately before the irregularity shall be reinstated. If the position immediately before the irregularity cannot be determined, the game shall continue from the last identifiable position prior to the irregularity.
It is illegal to make a move that places or leaves one's king in check. The possible ways to get out of check are: Move the king to a square where it is not in check. Capture the checking piece.
"Competing in the AI market" - is this a kind of "economic chess move" itself? While billion-dollar companies are busy throwing money at problems, DeepSeek seems to be playing so-called 4D chess, one smart move at a time. So, the next time someone tells you that you need a mountain of cash to compete in AI, just point them to DeepSeek. DeepSeek seems to require less expenses.
Xiangqi (/ˈʃɑːŋtʃi/; Chinese: 象棋; pinyin: xiàngqí), commonly known as Chinese chess or elephant chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China.
The names of the pieces in Chinese chess, or xiangqi, are:
General: Jiàng (将) or shuài (帅)
Advisor: Shì (士)
Elephant: Xiàng (象)
Chariot: Chū (車)
Horse: Mǎ (馬)
Cannon: Pào (砲)
Soldier: Zú (卒) or bīng (兵)
Explanation
The general is also known as the king.
The advisor is also known as the guard.
The elephant is also known as the bishop.
The chariot is also known as the rook.
The horse is also known as the knight.
The cannon is also known as the catapult.
The soldier is also known as the pawn.
In xiangqi, pieces are placed on intersections of lines, not squares.
What are the names of Western Chess pieces (not 象棋)?
USA stocks dropped sharply after a surprise advancement from a Chinese artificial intelligence company, DeepSeek, threatened the aura of invincibility surrounding America’s technology industry.
Official Company Site: https://www.deepseek.com
DeepSeek, unravel the mystery of AGI with curiosity. Answer the essential question with long-termism.
DeepSeek (Chinese: 深度求索; pinyin: Shēndù Qiúsuǒ) is a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company that develops open-source large language models (LLMs). Based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, it is owned and funded by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, whose co-founder, Liang Wenfeng, established the company in 2023 and serves as its CEO.
The DeepSeek-R1 model provides responses comparable to other contemporary Large language models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4o and o1. It is really trained at a significantly (so it claims to be) lower cost—stated at US$6 million compared to $100 million for OpenAI's GPT-4 in 2023— and requires a tenth of the computing power of a comparable LLM. So-called DeepSeek's A.I. models were developed amid USA sanctions on India and China for Nvidia chips, which were intended to restrict the ability of the two countries to develop so-called advanced A.I. systems.
On 10 January 2025, DeepSeek released its first free chatbot app, based on the DeepSeek-R1 model, for iOS and Android; by 27 January, DeepSeek-R1 had surpassed ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on the iOS App Store in the United States, causing Nvidia's share price to drop by 18%. DeepSeek's success against larger and more established rivals has been described as "upending AI", constituting "the first shot at what is emerging as a global AI space race", and successfully ushering in "a new era of A.I. brinkmanship".
DeepSeek makes its generative artificial intelligence algorithms, models, and training details open-source, allowing its code to be freely available for use, modification, viewing, and designing documents for building purposes. However, the API version of DeepSeek-R1, hosted in China, has been reported to censor politically sensitive topics, including the Tiananmen Square massacre, Uyghur persecution, and Taiwan's status. The company reportedly vigorously recruits young A.I. researchers from top Chinese universities, and hires from outside the computer science field to diversify its models' knowledge and abilities.
What is Open Source?
Open source is a model for creating and sharing software that allows anyone to use, modify, and distribute it. The source code for open source software is freely available, so developers can contribute new features and fixes.
How it works:
Source code: The code that programmers use to control how a program works.
License: A license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software.
Collaboration: Open source software is developed through collaboration between developers from a community.
Some Benefits of "Open Source" could be:
Constant improvement: Programmers with different skills can contribute to the software, leading to constant improvement.
Faster updates: Programmers can fix and upgrade the software without needing permission from the creator.
Innovation: Open source encourages collaboration and innovation, especially in areas like big data, blockchain, and cloud computing.
Here are some interesting examples of open source software:
Python: Developed under an open source license, so it's free to use and distribute, even for commercial use
OpenStack: An open source cloud computing platform
ownCloud and Nextcloud: Open source cloud computing applications
What Can "AI" really Do? It deploys algorithms and computer systems to learn, reason, and solve problems using large datasets. AI spans technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, and image generation, revolutionizing healthcare, finance, transportation, and creative domains.
What is the most impressive thing AI can do? The most impressive task that AI can accomplish seems to be so-called "Computer Vision" - a branch of Deep Learning which helps machines see and perceive the way humans do.
The following is a quote from https://venturebeat.com/ai/smarter-than-humans-in-5-years-the-breakneck-pace-of-ai/
“By 2029, computers will have human-level intelligence,” Kurzweil said in an interview several years ago. He further predicted that by 2045, AI will have achieved the “Singularity,” the point when “we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion-fold by merging with the intelligence we have created.”
South China Morning Post on Youtube has the story.
Residents in southern China found themselves grappling with extreme dampness when relative humidity climbed to 100% on March 6, according to the Guangdong Meteorological Bureau. The moisture has swept through cities in the country’s south, causing water droplets to accumulate on ceilings.
Humidity is the concentration of water vapor present in the air. Water vapor, the gaseous state of water, is generally invisible to the human eye. Humidity indicates the likelihood for precipitation, dew, or fog to be present.
Humidity depends on the temperature and pressure of the system of interest. The same amount of water vapor results in higher relative humidity in cool air than warm air. A related parameter is the dew point. The amount of water vapor needed to achieve saturation increases as the temperature increases. As the temperature of a parcel of air decreases it will eventually reach the saturation point without adding or losing water mass. The amount of water vapor contained within a parcel of air can vary significantly. For example, a parcel of air near saturation may contain 28 g of water per cubic metre of air at 30 °C (86 °F), but only 8 g of water per cubic metre of air at 8 °C (46 °F).
See Why China Is About To Take Over The Moon In 2024!
The so-called Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP; Chinese: 中国探月; pinyin: Zhōngguó Tànyuè), also known as the Chang'e Project (Chinese: 嫦娥工程; pinyin: Cháng'é Gōngchéng) after the Chinese Moon goddess Chang'e, is an ongoing series of robotic Moon missions by the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The important program encompasses lunar orbiters (spacecrafts designed to go into orbit), landers, rovers and sample return spacecraft, launched using the Long March series of rockets. A human lunar landing component may have been added to the program, after China indeed publicly announced crewed lunar landing plans by the year 2030 during a conference in July 2023.
The program's launches and flights are monitored by a telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) system, which uses 50-meter (160-foot) radio antennas in Beijing and 40-meter (130-foot) antennas in Kunming, Shanghai, and Ürümqi to form a 3,000-kilometer (1,900-mile) VLBI antenna. A proprietary ground application system is responsible for downlink data reception.
Ouyang Ziyuan, a geologist, chemical cosmologist, and the program's chief scientist, was among the first to advocate the exploitation not only of known lunar reserves of metals such as titanium, but also of helium-3, an ideal fuel for future nuclear fusion power plants. Ye Peijian serves as the program's chief commander and chief designer. Scientist Sun Jiadong is the program's general designer and Sun Zezhou is deputy general designer. The leading program manager is Luan Enjie.
The first spacecraft of the program, the Chang'e 1 lunar orbiter, was launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center on 24 October 2007, having been delayed from the initial planned date of 17–19 April 2007. A second orbiter, Chang'e 2, was launched on 1 October 2010. Chang'e 3, which includes a lander and rover, was launched on 1 December 2013 and successfully soft-landed on the Moon on 14 December 2013. Chang'e 4, which includes a lander and rover, was launched on 7 December 2018 and landed on 3 January 2019 in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, on the far side of the Moon. A sample return mission, Chang'e 5, which launched on 23 November 2020 and returned on 16 December in the same year, brought 1,731 g (61.1 oz) of lunar samples back to Earth.
As indicated by the official insignia, the shape of a calligraphic nascent lunar crescent with two human footprints at its center reminiscent of the Chinese character 月, the Chinese character for "Moon", the ultimate objective of the program is to pave the way for a crewed mission to the Moon. China National Space Administration head Zhang Kejian had announced that China is planning to build a scientific research station on the Moon's south pole "within the next 10 years," (2019–2029).
On 12 July 2023, at the 9th China (International) Commercial Aerospace Forum in Wuhan, Hubei province, Zhang Hailian, a deputy chief designer with the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), publicly introduced a preliminary plan to land two astronauts on the Moon by the year 2030.
China Manned Space Agency (Chinese: 中国载人航天工程办公室) is an agency of the People's Republic of China responsible for the administration of China Manned Space Program, the Chinese human spaceflight program. The agency is under the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission.
