ASIA IN BRIEF China's Chang'e-6 Probe has landed on the far side of the Moon on Sunday.

State media reported that an "autonomous visual obstacle avoidance system" assessed the "brightness and darkness of the lunar surface" and found a safe place for the probe to land.

The lander then "hovered about 100 meters above the safe landing area and used a laser 3D scanner to detect obstacles on the lunar surface to select the final landing site."

Chinese authorities have published the video below that shows Chang'e-6 touching down.

The craft is the first to land in this region of the Moon, making its mission to retrieve samples of great interest and importance.

The landing caps a busy week in space for China - it also launched a CERES-1 commercial rocket carrying four satellites from a ship positioned off from the coast of Shandong province in the Yellow Sea.

The rocket launched last Wednesday on its 12th flight mission, according to state-sponsored media. CERES-1 is a small satellite launch vehicle developed by the Chinese commercial space company Galactic Energy.

Singapore releases open source AI safety toolkit

Singapore last week launched an open source toolkit for app developers to test generative AI safety, called Project Moonshot.

The toolkit allows businesses to rate their LLM applications against specific benchmarks - including whether they can understand local languages, slang or cultural nuance. Moonshot also tests whether LLMs can be enticed to produce violent or offensive content.

"It can test both foundation models and AI applications built on top of these models," explained minister for communications and information Josephine Teo.

"It helps organizations building AI systems to more easily test and compare results so as to identify weaknesses that they can fix," she added.

China stops influencers flaunting wealth

Some Chinese social media influencers who focus their content on ostentatious and over the top displays of wealth have found themselves suspended from their platforms of choice.

The suspensions are a result of a campaign on platforms like Douyin, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu to crack down on the behavior, reported state-sponsored media. A warning of the crackdown was even posted on Sina Weibo on May 15.

Huawei's HarmonyOS NEXT details leaked

Huawei's new HarmonyOS NEXT interfaces have been leaked on Weibo ahead of the Huawei Developer Conference (HDC). The conference marks the start of the operating system's beta test - perhaps on laptops in addition to smartphones.

India fines Satya Nadella over LinkedIn ties

India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has issued [PDF] fines totalling INR 2.7 million ($32,000) to LinkedIn India and nine individuals - including parent company Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella - for violating significant beneficial ownership (SBO) norms. Accusations includes that LinkedIn was less than truthful about the business's holding structure.

"All the officers, including the non-executive directors, are liable for this violation due to the presumption of clear knowledge on the part of each of such directors about the holding structure of the company," stated the document.

APAC Dealbook

Recent alliances and deals spotted by The Register across the region last week include:

• Nvidia, Tribe, and Digital Industry Singapore (DISG) launched a global AI startup accelerator last Wednesday called Ignition AI accelerator.

  The Singapore-based accelerator begins with $3 million in the kitty to guide 15 startups through a four-month program that is designed to bring them toward market readiness.

• Grab revealed a deal with OpenAI that will see the superapp access generative AI for accessibility, customer support and mapping.

  The company will also deploy a pilot ChatGPT for its employees to boost productivity.

• ST Telemedia Global Data Centres announced its Southeast datacenters are now AI ready.

  "AI clusters are already operational in STT GDC's datacenters in both Singapore and Thailand today, with additional AI clusters expected to be operational in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia within the next two years," declared the biz.

• Hyperscale datacenter operator Yondr Group secured a loan of up to $150 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC) for the construction of a hyperscale campus in Johor, Malaysia.

  "Yondr's Johor campus, located in Sedenak Tech Park, will become the largest hyperscale datacenter campus in Southeast Asia with 300MW+ IT load power capacity situated on 72.5 acres of land," proclaimed the company.

  "Geographically, Johor is perfectly located due to its proximity to Singapore, offering important interconnectivity routes and scalable digital infrastructure,” it added.

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https://www.theregister.com//2024/06/03/asia_tech_news_roundup/