Watch Mark Zuckerberg speak Chinese
In case you missed it, here's Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking Mandarin Chinese at Beijing's Tsinghua University.
Zuckerberg surprised the audience by speaking and answering questions in Mandarin for almost 30-minutes.
His heavy accent caused a few moments of misunderstanding - like when he tried to say the word "billion" but it came out as "eleven."
But no matter. It was an inspiring effort!
Looking back at 2013
News Stream usually brings you stories about the power of technology to improve our lives. But in 2013, the top tech story was more ominous.
Since June, revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency's surveillance programs have come to light. The fallout has been felt in Washington and the rest of the world.
Tech companies have expressed outrage over the U.S. government's spying practices. Listen to Google's chairman Eric Schmidt in Part 1 (above).
In Part 2, hear from Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and examine the new generation of gaming consoles.
Finally in Part 3, astronaut Chris Hadfield speaks about his popular videos from space. And we ask what the future holds for mobile technology.
We hope you enjoy these highlights from 2013. We look forward to the year ahead!
Flying robots
Technically they're called "Autonomous Agile Aerial Robots." But it's also accurate to call them Really Awesome Self-Flying Robots.
The University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab created these UAVs to be light and maneuverable. They measure about 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter and weigh 60-70 grams.
Professor Vijay Kumar explained how they work at a recent TED talk. There is no GPS system guiding their movements. Instead, they are equipped with a Microsoft Kinect and a Hokuyo laser scanner. They can actually be sent into a building and create a map of it on the fly.
When they're not making music, of course.
"Please end the indifference": Netizens react to toddler's road accident in China
Two-year-old Yue Yue is still fighting for her life in hospital.
Grueling footage that has sparked outrage online shows her as the victim of two successive hit-and-run incidents outside a hardware market in Foshan, Guangdong Province. It shows more than a dozen passersby ignored the injured Yue Yue as she was left barely moving in a pool of her own blood, only to be rescued 10 minutes later by a garbage scavenger Chen Xianmei.
In an emotional video posted online, you can see Yue Yue's parents kneeling with their foreheads to the ground in a gesture of extreme deference. Chen looks evidently uncomfortable at the attention and tries to get the couple to stand up.
According to local reports, Chen has been criticised in China; many have accused her of being a fame-seeker. However, Yue Yue's mother says she believes Chen was showing the goodness in human nature. FULL POST
Digital face-swapping
Anyone who's seen the Mission: Impossible films will remember seeing characters rip life-like masks off their faces to reveal Tom Cruise underneath.
Now a Spanish coder has figured out a way to put someone else's face on your own through the power of software alone - no mask required.
Rebecca Black: The Future of Music or a Cautionary Tale?
Rebecca Black. Love her or hate her. But if you’re leaning towards the latter, take a moment to put yourself in her shoes. If you were an ambitious, borderline-precocious 13-year-old Californian whose mommy and daddy could pay to make you a star, would you refuse their offer? I very much doubt it.
By all means hate the track with which Black has risen to YouTube infamy. “Friday” is Ke$ha without the booze references, and if you knew the true toxicity of my venom towards Ke$ha, you’d appreciate how much I despise it. The lyrics appear to have been conceived by a bargain basement Taiwanese robot armed only with a calendar and admittedly admirable "copy and paste" skills. The melody has all the merits of a rejected Daphne & Celeste B-side. And that thing they’ve done to her voice? If the producers used a button entitled “Singing under the bathwater with a wired-up TV thrown in for good measure”, I’d have to concede they’ve nailed it. FULL POST
The Oscars should lose it
I will admit the only part of the award show I watched was the opening monologue. And that five minutes and 15 seconds made me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Why were two not very funny actors hosting the entire ceremony?
Getty Images
And then it dawned on me: we don't need them. Sure, a controversial comedian like Ricky Gervais is great for the Golden Globes. The pre-Oscars needs all the buzz it can get.
But the Academy Awards has gotten out of hand. The most important night in Hollywood goes on way too long. Let's lose the host.
Dancing with Matt
You probably don't know who Matt Harding is. But I bet you've seen his videos.
Matt's the guy who visits countless countries across the globe to do a little five second dance. I'm actually not entirely sure we can call it a dance; it's a bit more like a jig, or as a nameless colleague said, "he's really just running in place". Judge for yourself by watching here.
Matt's making another video and he swung by Hong Kong. And while he was here, we had to get him on News Stream to tell us his story... and we couldn't resist having him do a little dance with us.
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