Canon plans to price its new chipmaking gear at a fraction of the cost of ASML Holding NV's best lithography machines, seeking to make inroads in the cutting-edge equipment now playing a central role in the US-China tech rivalry. From a report: The Tokyo-based company's new nanoimprint technology would open up a way for smaller semiconductor makers to produce advanced chips, now almost wholly the domain of the sector's biggest firms, Chief Executive Officer Fujio Mitarai said. "The price will have one digit less than ASML's EUVs," said the 88-year-old, now on his third stint as Canon's president after last stepping back from day-to-day operations in 2016. He added that a final pricing decision hasn't been made.

Veldhoven, Netherlands-based ASML is the only supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography tools, the world's most advanced chipmaking machines costing hundreds of millions of dollars each. The product of decades of research and investment, EUV rigs are essential for mass-producing the fastest and most energy-efficient chips, which cram millions of transistors into every square millimeter of silicon. Only a handful of cash-rich companies can afford to invest in the tools, which are now under scrutiny for their linchpin status in the tech supply chain. ASML is banned from exporting EUV systems to Chinese customers, following US pressure on its allies to restrict technology flows to Beijing.

Smartphones and electric cars are both powered by lithium-ion batteries, notes the Economist. These "Li-ion" batteries "form the guts of a growing number of grid-storage systems that smooth the flow of electricity from wind and solar power stations. Without them, the electrification needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming would be unimaginable." But unfortunately, building them requires scarce metals.

"A clutch of companies, though, think they have an alternative: making batteries with sodium instead..." And the idea of building "Na-ion" batteries at scale is "gaining traction." Engineers are tweaking designs. Factories, particularly in China, are springing up. For the first time since the Li-ion revolution began, lithium's place on the electrochemical pedestal is being challenged... [A]ccording to Rory McNulty, a research analyst at Benchmark, Chinese firms have 34 Na-ion-battery factories built, being built or announced inside the country, and one planned in Malaysia. Established battery-makers in other places, by contrast, are not yet showing much interest. Even without a five-year plan to guide them, though, some non-Chinese startups are seeking to steal a march by developing alternatives to layered oxides, in the hope of improving the technology, reducing its cost, or both.

One of the most intriguing of these neophytes is Natron Energy, of Santa Clara, California... Natron claims that its cells can endure 50,000 cycles of charging and discharging — between ten and 100 times more than commercial Li-ion batteries can manage. The firm has built a factory in Michigan, which it says will begin production later this year. Other non-Chinese firms are less far advanced, but full of hope. Altris, in Sweden, which is also building a factory, employs a material called Prussian white that substitutes some of the iron in Prussian blue with sodium. Tiamat, in France, uses a polyanionic design involving vanadium. And Faradion, in Britain (now owned by Reliance, an Indian firm), intends to stick with a layered-metal-oxide system.
Thanks to Slashdot reader echo123 for sharing the article.

David Shepardson reports via Reuters: The top members of a U.S. House committee on China are introducing a bill that seeks to ban the U.S. government from buying Chinese drones. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the committee, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat, are introducing the "American Security Drone Act" on Wednesday, the lawmakers said in a statement to Reuters. "This bill would prohibit the federal government from using American taxpayer dollars to purchase this equipment from countries like China," Gallagher said. "It is imperative that Congress pass this bipartisan bill to protect U.S. interests and our national security supply chain."

The bill would also bar local and state governments from purchasing Chinese drones using federal grants and require a federal report detailing the amount of foreign commercial off-the-shelf drones and covered unmanned aircraft systems procured by federal departments and agencies from China. Krishnamoorthi said the bill "helps protect against any vulnerabilities posed by our government agencies' reliance on foreign-manufactured drone technology and will encourage growth in the U.S. drone industry."

Separately, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved an amendment proposed by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Democrat Mark Warner that would prohibit the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from operating or providing federal funds for drones produced in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela or Cuba. "Taxpayer dollars should never fund drones manufactured in regions that are hostile toward our nation," Blackburn said. China recently announced export controls on some drones and drone-related equipment, saying it wanted to safeguard "national security and interests." The U.S. Commerce Department in 2020 added dozens of Chinese companies to a trade blacklist, including the country's top chipmaker SMIC and Chinese drone giant DJI.

According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will start introductory production on the standard iPhone 17 in India, marking the first time the company begins development of a new iPhone outside of China. MacRumors reports: Apple will opt to assemble the standard iPhone 17 in India because it has a "lower difficulty" design that will minimize risk. Apple has been manufacturing older iPhones and other devices in India since for several years now in an effort to move more of its manufacturing out of China. Apple has slowly started giving factories in India more responsibility, and began iPhone 14 production in the country just a few weeks after the device launched in September 2022. iPhone 15 production started even earlier, with factories in the country assembling the base iPhone 15 model prior to launch, but assembly still started in China first.

As of now, Kuo believes that 12 to 14 percent of global iPhone shipments are made in India, with that proportion to increase to 20 to 25 percent by 2024. In addition to allowing Apple to move manufacturing away from China, increasing production in India provides Apple with an opportunity to strengthen its relationship with the Indian government. India is a key market for Apple due to growing demand for Apple products in the country.

Twenty-eight countries including the US, UK and China have agreed to work together to ensure artificial intelligence is used in a "human-centric, trustworthy and responsible" way, in the first global commitment of its kind. From a report: The pledge forms part of a communique signed by major powers including Brazil, India and Saudi Arabia, at the inaugural AI Safety Summit. The two-day event, hosted and convened by British prime minister Rishi Sunak at Bletchley Park, started on Wednesday. Called the Bletchley Declaration, the document recognises the "potential for serious, even catastrophic, harm" to be caused by advanced AI models, but adds such risks are "best addressed through international co-operation." Other signatories include the EU, France, Germany, Japan, Kenya and Nigeria.

The communique represents the first global statement on the need to regulate the development of AI, but at the summit there are expected to be disagreements about how far such controls should go. Country representatives attending the event include Hadassa Getzstain, Israeli chief of staff at the ministry of innovation, science and technology, and Wu Zhaohui, Chinese vice minister for technology. Gina Raimondo, US commerce secretary, gave an opening speech at the summit and announced a US safety institute to evaluate the risks of AI. This comes on the heels of a sweeping executive order by President Joe Biden, announced on Monday, and intended to curb the risks posed by the technology.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Peru's Kimberly Garcia set a world record in her gold-medal winning turn at the women's 20 kilometer race walk event at the Pan American Games this weekend. Until she didn't. Once the race was over, organizers determined there was a serious "measuring problem" with the track, making the race times of Garcia, fellow medal winners Glenda Morejon of Ecuador and Peru's Evelyn Inga, and their competitors null and void. The athletes guessed the track had been drawn up roughly 3 kilometers (about 1.9 miles) shorter than it was supposed to be. Garcia crossed the finish line in 1 hour, 12 minutes and 26 seconds. The world record of 1 hour, 23 minutes and 49 seconds is held by China's Jiayu Yang. The athletes suspected something was amiss mid-race, according to the Associated Press.

The Santiago 2023 Corporation, the group in charge of the 2023 Pan American Games, placed the blame on the Pan American Athletics Association, which reportedly chose the person who measured the race course. In a statement following the race, Santiago 2023 said the official who measured the course "did not take accurate measurements of the route the athletes took during the race." The group continued, "We deeply regret the inconvenience for the athletes, their coaches, the public and the attending press, but this situation cannot be attributed to the Organizing Committee."

China's popular social media platforms are requiring "self-media" accounts with over 500,000 followers to disclose real-name information, prompting concerns over increased doxxing and privacy among some users. Reuters reports: China's most popular social media platforms on Tuesday announced that "self-media" accounts with more than 500,000 followers will be asked to display real-name information, a controversial measure that has prompted concerns over doxxing and privacy among some users. "Self-media" includes news and information not necessarily approved by the government, a genre of online content regulators have cracked down on in recent years to "purify" China's cyberspace. [...]

Rumors of the new policy had prompted lively debate among users. Some, like former state media editor Hu Xijin, have defended the measure as necessary in order to force influential accounts to use more responsible speech. Others, however, have expressed concerns that the measure would make doxxing easier and platforms would further remove online users' anonymity in the future.

The new measures will remove the anonymity of thousands of influencers on social media platforms that are used daily by hundreds of millions of Chinese. Several of the platforms said that accounts with over 1 million followers would be affected first and those that do not comply would face restrictions in their online traffic and income as a consequence.

Winter has come early for Apple, and it might last a while. From a report: The world's largest company by market value has become worth considerably less over the past three months. Apple's share price has slid 11% since the company reported its fiscal third-quarter results on Aug. 3, erasing nearly $400 billion in market value. It is hardly a typical swing given the fact that the company has long used the fall season to launch its biggest products for every year, including new iPhones. This is the first year since 2015 that Apple shares have lost ground between the company's key Worldwide Developers Conference in June and its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report that typically takes place in late October.

That report is expected Thursday afternoon, and it will be the first to reflect sales of the iPhone 15 family that was launched in late September. Investors are worried that Apple's largest business is now facing new and potentially long-term threats. The growing geopolitical rift between the U.S. and China has finally caught Apple in its vortex, spurring reports of Chinese authorities considering a ban on the use of iPhones and other Apple devices by government employees. To make matters worse, Apple's old China-based rival Huawei appears to have made a comeback. The company launched a new smartphone called the Mate 60 Pro in September that reportedly is capable of 5G speeds, even though U.S. sanctions were supposed to deny the company the chips necessary for such an accomplishment.

The Washington Post's editorial board looks at America's "net neutrality" debate.

But first they note that America's communications-regulating FCC has "limited authority to regulate unless broadband is considered a 'common carrier' under the Telecommunications Act of 1996." The FCC under President Barack Obama moved to reclassify broadband so it could regulate broadband companies; the FCC under President Donald Trump reversed the change. Dismayed advocates warned the world that, without the protections in place, the internet would break. You'll never guess what happened next: nothing. Or, at least, almost nothing. The internet did not break, and internet service providers for the most part did not block and they did not throttle.

All the same, today's FCC, under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, has just moved to re-reclassify broadband. The interesting part is that her strongest argument doesn't have much to do with net neutrality, but with some of the other benefits the country could see from having a federal watchdog keeping an eye on the broadband business... Broadband is an essential service... Yet there isn't a single government agency with sufficient authority to oversee this vital tool. Asserting federal authority over broadband would empower regulation of any blocking, throttling or anti-competitive paid traffic prioritization that they might engage in. But it could also help ensure the safety and security of U.S. networks.

The FCC has, on national security grounds, removed authorization for companies affiliated with adversary states, such as China's Huawei, from participating in U.S. telecommunications markets. The agency can do this for phone carriers. But it can't do it for broadband, because it isn't allowed to. Or consider public safety during a crisis. The FCC doesn't have the ability to access the data it needs to know when and where there are broadband outages — much less the ability to do anything about those outages if they are identified. Similarly, it can't impose requirements for network resiliency to help prevent those outages from occurring in the first place — during, say, a natural disaster or a cyberattack.

The agency has ample power to police the types of services that are becoming less relevant in American life, such as landline telephones, and little power to police those that are becoming more important every day.
The FCC acknowledges this power would also allow them to prohibit "throttling" of content. But the Post's editorial also makes the argument that here in 2023 that's "unlikely to have any major effect on the broadband industry in either direction... Substantial consequences have only become less likely as high-speed bandwidth has become less limited."

Bloomberg thinks they've identified the source of the advanced chips in Huawei's newest smartphone, citing to "people familiar with the matter". In a suggestion that export restrictions on Europe's most valuable tech company may have come too late to stem China's advances in chipmaking, ASML's so-called immersion deep ultraviolet machines were used in combination with tools from other companies to make the Huawei Technologies Co. chip, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing information that's not public. ASML declined to comment.

There is no suggestion that their sales violated export restrictions... ASML has never been able to sell its EUV machines to China because of export restrictions. But less advanced DUV models can be retooled with deposition and etching gear to produce 7-nanometer and possibly even more advanced chips, according to industry analysts. The process is much more expensive than using EUV, making it very difficult to scale production in a competitive market environment. In China, however, the government is willing to shoulder a significant portion of chipmaking costs.

Chinese companies have been legally stockpiling DUV gear for years — especially after the U.S. introduced its initial export controls last year before getting Japan and the Netherlands on board... According to an investor presentation published by the company last week, ASML experienced a jump in business from China this year as chipmakers there boosted orders ahead of the export controls taking full effect in 2024. China accounted for 46% of ASML's sales in the third quarter, compared with 24% in the previous quarter and 8% in the three months ending in March.
Another article from Bloomberg includes this prediction: The U.S. won't be able to stop Huawei and SMIC from making progress in chip technology, Burn J. Lin, a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. vice president, told Bloomberg News. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp should be able to advance to the next generation at 5 nanometers with machines from ASML Holding NV that it already operates, said Lin, who at TSMC championed the lithography technology that transformed chipmaking.
The end result is that Huawei's profit "more than doubled during the quarter it revealed its biggest achievement in chip technology," the article reports, "adding to signs the Chinese tech leader is steadying a business rocked by US sanctions." The Shenzhen company reported a 118% surge in net profit to 26.4 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) in the September quarter, and a slight rise in sales to 145.7 billion yuan, according to Bloomberg News calculations from nine-month results released Friday. Those numbers included initial sales of the vastly popular Mate 60 Pro, which began shipping in late August... The gadget sold out almost instantly, spurring expectations it could rejuvenate Huawei's fortunes and potentially cut into Apple Inc.'s lead in China, given signs of a disappointing debut for the iPhone 15...

A resurgent Huawei would pose problems not just for Apple but also local brands from Xiaomi Corp. to Oppo and Vivo, all of which are fighting for sales in a shrinking market.

The World Science Fiction Society "administers and presents the Hugo Awards, the oldest and most noteworthy award for science fiction," according to Wikipedia. Its members vote on each year's winners, and this year they received 1,847 nominating ballots.

This year the 81st edition of their World Science Fiction Convention was held from October 18 to 22 in Chengdu, China. More details from Gizmodo: While fan-favorite cozy fantasy novel Legends & Lattes lost Best Novel to T. Kingfisher's excellent horror-fantasy Nettle & Bone, Legends & Lattes author Travis Baldtree won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Everything Everywhere All at Once snagged film's top honor, and The Expanse's finale episode did the same for televsion, beating out both nominated Andor episodes among others. Some other great standouts include short fiction editor Neil Clarke, who has kept Clarkesworld magazine running despite getting swamped by AI-generated submissions earlier this year.
And "By winning Best Graphic Story or Comic, [Bartosz] Sztybor-who also served as a producer on the overwhelmingly popular Netflix anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners-also becomes the first Polish author to win a Hugo," reports Forbes: [Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams] is set in Night City-as seen in Cyberpunk 2077-and follows the story of two small-time thieves, Tasha and Mirek, who are trying to survive the harsh metropolis together. "Tasha and Mirek make a living for themselves stealing cyberware and indulging in parties and braindances," the official teaser explains...
Other highlights from this year's awards:

• Best novella: Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)
• Best Novelette: "The Space-Time Painter", by Hai Ya (Galaxy's Edge, April 2022)
• Best Short Story: "Rabbit Test", by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)
• Best Series: Children of Time series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)
• Best Related Work: Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday)

Efforts to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas commonly produced as a by-product of refrigerant manufacture might be falling short, and it seems eastern China is a major culprit. Nature: The hydrofluorocarbon gas, HFC-23, is around 14,700 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at warming the globe and has long been the subject of national and international climate-change mitigation efforts. Those efforts gained new traction nearly a decade ago when China and India -- the world's largest producers of the chemical -- agreed to dial down its emissions. New research, however, confirms that emissions continued to rise in subsequent years, and an analysis of data from atmospheric-monitoring stations suggests that factories in eastern China are responsible for nearly half of the total.

The rogue emissions are one of several air-pollution sources under discussion at the latest meeting of the Montreal Protocol, held in Nairobi, Kenya, this week. Signed in 1987, the Montreal Protocol is generally considered the most effective international environmental treaty in history, having halted the destruction of the ozone layer while also slowing down global warming. But scientists have often played a role, scanning the atmosphere for chemicals, such as ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), that governments have agreed to phase out. "Science has been instrumental in evaluating compliance under the treaty," says Megan Lickley, a climate scientist at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced the creation of a 39-member advisory body to address issues in the international governance of artificial intelligence. From a report: Members include tech company executives, government officials from Spain to Saudi Arabia, and academics from countries such as the U.S., Russia and Japan. Sony Chief Technology Officer Hiroaki Kitano, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and Microsoft Chief Responsible AI Officer Natasha Crampton are among the executives representing technology companies.

Representatives also come from six continents with diverse backgrounds ranging from U.S.-based AI expert Vilas Dhar to Professor Yi Zeng fom China and Egyptian lawyer Mohamed Farahat. "The transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp," Guterres said in a statement. "And without entering into a host of doomsday scenarios, it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion and threaten democracy itself," he said.

NR Narayana Murthy, the founder of software consultancy giant Infosys, urged youngsters in India to work 70 hours a week if they want the nation to compete with other economies. From a report: Narayana Murthy, in conversation with former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai, said that India's work productivity is among the lowest in the world. In order to compete with countries like China, India's youngsters must put in extra hours of work -- like Japan and Germany did after World War 2.

He also blamed other issues like corruption in the government and bureaucratic delays, saying: "India's work productivity is one of the lowest in the world. Unless we improve our work productivity, unless we reduce corruption in the government at some level, because we have been reading I don't know the truth of it, unless we reduce the delays in our bureaucracy in taking this decision, we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress." Murthy, 77, added his request to the youngsters of today. "So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, 'This is my country. I'd like to work 70 hours a week.'"

Japan's contribution to world-class research continues to decline, despite having one of the world's largest research communities, according to a report by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), released in English on 25 October. From a report: Masatsura Igami, the director of the Center for S&T Foresight and Indicators at the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in Tokyo, and one of the authors of the 2023 edition of the Japanese Science and Technology Indicators report, says that the findings highlight several areas that Japan could explore to improve its global standing. "Japan's current research environment is far from ideal and is unsustainable. The research environment must shape up," he says.

The report shows that Japan ranks third globally in the total number of researchers, following China and the United States. However, this workforce is not producing the same level of high-impact research as it was two decades ago. Japan's global share of research papers in the top 10% of most-cited articles has slipped from 6% to 2%, intensifying concerns in Japan about its dwindling international standing. Igami explains that the rest of the world has overtaken Japan in terms of quality research output. Some of the decline might be attributable to funding, Igami says. The 2023 report shows that research spending in the university sector has grown by roughly 80% in the United States and Germany, and 40% in France, has quadrupled in South Korea and has increased more than tenfold in China over the past two decades. By contrast, Japan's spending has increased by 10%.

However, even if researchers receive more funding, producing high-impact research might still be challenging, because Japanese scientists have less time for actual research, Igami says. According to a 2020 analysis by MEXT, the proportion of time that university researchers dedicated to science decreased from 47% to 33% between 2002 and 2018. [...] The report's findings confirm those of a previous survey of early-career researchers that pointed to a lack of time for research as a notable factor in job dissatisfaction.

China is increasing its lead over the US in AI patent filings, underscoring the Asian nation's determination to shape and influence a technology that could have broad implications for the world's richest economies. From a report: Chinese institutions applied for 29,853 AI-related patents in 2022, climbing from 29,000 the year prior, according to data that the World Intellectual Property Organization provided to Bloomberg News. That's almost 80% more than US filings, which shrank 5.5%. Overall, China accounted for more than 40% of global AI applications over the past year, the data from the United Nations-affiliated agency showed. Japan and South Korea rounded out the 2022 leaders, with a combined 16,700 applications. The numbers illustrate how Beijing has pushed Chinese companies and agencies to gain an edge in areas such as chipmaking, space exploration and military sciences. More recently, President Xi Jinping has ordered the nation to accelerate fundamental research in response to US efforts to curtail its access to advanced technologies. That's triggered a flood of investment by Chinese companies in AI and quantum computing.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Chinese oil and gas company PetroChina (0857) has completed the first international crude oil trade using the country's central bank digital currency (CBDC), the e-CNY, China Daily reported on Saturday. PetroChina bought 1 million barrels of crude oil settled in e-CNY, or digital yuan, at the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange (SHPGX) on Oct. 18, according to the report by the Chinese Communist Party-owned newspaper. The SHPGX did not disclose the exact value of the deal nor the seller's identity.

China's government may wish to use the e-CNY as a tool for expanding the international use of its currency, also known as the renminbi, so using it to settle purchases of major global commodities like crude oil would be one way to underpin this expansion. While almost all the world's major economies are at least looking at developing a CBDC, China's is comfortably among the most advanced. Transactions using the currency hit 1.8 trillion yuan ($250 billion) as of the end of June, with e-CNY accounting for 0.16% of the cash in circulation.

The hangover from the bursting of the startup bubble is weighing on big U.S. university endowments, with write-downs in their growth and venture-capital investments driving a second straight year of weak returns. From a report: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported a loss of 2.9% and Duke University, a loss of 1% for the fiscal year ending June 30, while endowments at Yale and Stanford gained 1.8% and 4.4%, respectively. The median return for endowments and foundations of more than $1 billion was 5.6%, according to a preliminary estimate from Cambridge Associates.

That was well behind the overall stock market. The MSCI All Country World Index and the S&P 500 gained 17.1% and 19.6% for the period, including dividends, respectively. They were boosted by the rally in tech giants including Microsoft and Nvidia that have benefited from developments in artificial intelligence. Small endowments of less than $500 million, which typically have less exposure to private investments and more to public equities, had a median return of 8.8%, according to Cambridge. "You were at the mercy of portfolio construction," said Matt Bank of Charlotte, N.C.-based Global Endowment Management, an outsourced investment firm. "Those decisions drove your short-term results, and the specific decisions you made within categories mattered less." Exposure to China also had a negative impact on returns, several endowment chiefs said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: China has unveiled plans to restrict exports of graphite -- a mineral crucial to the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) -- on national security grounds, the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs said Friday. The announcement comes just days after the United States imposed additional limits on the kinds of semiconductors that American companies can sell to Chinese firms. China, which dominates the world's production and processing of graphite, says export permits will be needed, starting in December, for synthetic graphite material -- including high-purity, high-strength and high-density versions -- as well as for natural flake graphite. [...]

According to the US Geological Survey (PDF), the market for graphite used in batteries has grown 250% globally since 2018. China was the world's leading graphite producer last year, accounting for an estimated 65% of global production, it said. Besides EVs, graphite is commonly used in the semiconductor, aerospace, chemical and steel industries. The export curbs were announced as China faces pressure from multiple governments over its commercial and trade practices. For more than a year, it has been embroiled in a tech war with the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia over access to advanced chips and chipmaking equipment. "At the moment both China and Western countries are engaged in a tit for tat, highlighting how protectionist measures often spread. Newton's third law that every action causes a reaction applies here, too," said Stefan Legge, head of tax and trade policy research at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland.

"At the same time, both sides of the dispute also realize how costly it is if geopolitics trumps economics," he added.

A user writes: Multiple outlets are reporting that Apple TV Plus has cancelled Jon Stewart's popular show The Problem with Jon Stewart, reportedly over editorial disagreements with regards to planned stories on the People's Republic of China and AI. Fans and haters of Apple will both recall that Apple recently made changes to AirDrop, one of the few effective means Chinese dissidents and protesters had for exchanging information off-grid at scale, and will ask why Apple is apparently not only willing, but eager, to carry water for the PRC, overriding both human rights and practical business concerns in the process. "Apple approached Stewart directly and expressed its need for the host and his team to be 'aligned' with the company's views on topics discussed," reports The Verge, citing The Hollywood Reporter. "Rather than falling in line when Apple threatened to cancel the show, Stewart reportedly decided to walk."