One night in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a felting artisan ended her day with a prayer. May our partners have good health. May they be ambitious, and successful, and may their businesses grow. The next morning, sisters-in-law Chinara Makashova and Nazgul Esenbaeva, and the people they worked with awoke to what seemed like a miracle: Shopify orders. So many Shopify orders.
Technology
Wool, water, Wi-Fi: Modernizing an ancient business at the final frontiers of e-commerce
They got to work. It felt like everything was falling into place: The company they had built from scratch was exporting felted slippers and artisan products to wholesale partners around the globe. And with help from USAID’s green business initiative in Central Asia, they were expanding their production abilities — and finally building their own modern, direct-to-consumer web store: one with the payment processing and data security infrastructure to help them reach customers directly.
But just as their new ecommerce infrastructure was coming together, the USAID funding vanished around the world — leaving them with a $35,000 funding gap. In so many places, the internet makes building a retail business easy — but in the world’s most land-locked country, with a banking system bogged down by sanctions against one neighbor and cybersecurity barriers against another, growth is a balancing act. Tumar’s path has been unconventional: bringing together nomadic tradition, Soviet legacy, and digital commerce to build a modern business, even when the infrastructure around them can’t keep up. Their first challenge: scaling a 5,000-year-old process that had never before been automated, with machines salvaged from the collapse of the USSR.
For centuries, Kyrgyz nomads on the Eurasian steppe drove their flocks from the low green valleys to the snowy slopes of the Tian Shan mountains, sheared their sheeps’ lush thick wool, and used heat, water, and friction to felt it into the durable shyrdak blankets that lined their yurts. Felt may have been the world’s first-ever textile. It was strong, dense, and durable. It could stand up to bitter cold or pouring rain. But between industrialization and the pressure, under Soviet rule, to abandon the past, Kyrgyz wet felting by hand almost disappeared. In fact this particular felting tradition was just a few farflung elders and hidden artifacts from extinction in the 1990s when some women in Bishkek, graduating from university into a post-Soviet world, began to seek out, re-learn, and revive the practice.
Makashova and Esenbaeva — with help from Makashova’s aunt Roza — learned how to use this millennia-old technique of wet felting with Kyrgyz wool to make things like shyrdaks and kalpak hats. In 1998, they started Tumar Art Group. Within a decade, Tumar had its first wholesale partner. And in recent years, USAID-funded programs helped them share their knowledge with women throughout Central Asia, reviving an ancient industry while spurring a new economy.
On the felt factory floor
Today, Tumar’s Bishkek facility is a labyrinth of sunlit workspaces, some with pastel floor tiles, some with geraniums lining the windowsills, one full of old jelly jars and coffee containers full of pigments and dyes. Workers pull giant, fluffy sheets of “pre-felt” off the conveyor belt of a wool carding machine. On a switchboard that looks like a Cold War rocket launch interface, they toggle dials that are labeled in Chinese, with hand-scrawled Cyrillic translations taped above.
These days, modern, commercial felting operations use a water-free needle-felting process, Makashova explained. Some incorporate glue or synthetic fibers. But not here. Tumar’s engineering team hacked their way to avoiding all that, leveraging their custom manufacturing line to automate processes like carding (aligning the fibers), or kneading, done with a one-of-a-kind “beating machine.”
“We take care to keep our traditional technology of wet felting,” Makashova said. But “for the most complicated process of wet pressing, modern engineering does not offer machines, so we have to look for old Soviet schemes, adapt and make these machines ourselves — or restore old machines.”
To make one of their most in-demand products — felted slippers — they needed a heavy metal tub to hold water and heat, and flywheels that could apply consistent rhythmic pressure and agitation to the wool. An old Soviet wool milling machine would have done the trick. “Unfortunately,” Makashova said, “they are almost impossible to find.”
With scant financial resources and an economy in upheaval, it was hard for this start-up to find, acquire, and ship in the machines they needed — in part because some of those machines didn’t yet exist: Kyrgyz hand felting had never before been automated. Makashova’s brother, an automotive engineer, organized the group’s own small “mechanization base,” collecting, first, Soviet tools and metalworking machines. Gradually, the company acquired textile processing equipment from Italy, China, Russia, and beyond, salvaging, renovating, retrofitting, and Frankensteining equipment to bring automation to an ancient craft.
Then, more good fortune arrived: A Tumar associate found a tub and flywheels in “a heap of scrap metal intended for recycling,” Makashova recalled. The company’s engineering group restored the find, “and now we can’t imagine our work without these machines.”
As of the 2010s, Tumar was working more with wholesale partners around the world while continuing to make goods for their brick-and-mortar shop of the same name, on a sunny corner in central Bishkek, popular with tourists and expats.
By the late 2010s, the global market for sustainable, natural materials was on an upswing, and travelers coming through their Bishkek shop took notice, including a guy in Richmond, Virginia named Barclay Saul. He loved that you could see Tumar’s entire supply chain, from field to factory, in a day, and in the exploding landscape of eco-conscious “Instagram brands,” he and a partner decided to launch Kyrgies out of a Richmond storage space, and sell the slippers online.
In spring of 2020, when tourism came to a halt, Tumar’s bustling retail business did too. Saul’s bet was a smart one: Kyrgies’ sales surged. People were staying home — and they wanted the right footwear for it. But they also wanted natural materials. “This business has taught me simply that [people want to] buy less stuff, quality stuff,” Kyrgies CEO Saul said. Kyrgies’ ecommerce business has continued to double year over year, enabling Tumar to double its staff and scale their output fourfold in the past five years.
This is the dream, Chinara said — but there’s one dream they still haven’t been able to manifest in the reality of today’s complicated internet: their own web store. The sale of artisan goods out of the Bishkek storefront is still, in some ways, the most important thing they do, said Makashova. It’s just a quarter of their revenue, but it’s a source for their product innovation. Thanks to platforms like Shopify, Kyrgies could launch their retail business in the US virtually overnight. But for a Kyrgyzstan-based business, online retail is no easy feat. The cost of shipping by air or land from the heart of Central Asia is the first hurdle. And another thing: There’s no PayPal here. Payment systems, Makashova said, are “a very, very big problem.”
Still today, Kyrgyzstan’s banking system is closely tied to Russia’s, and Western sanctions put in place after Putin’s invasion of Crimea have made cross-border transactions tricky. Some Kyrgyz banks, wary of being blacklisted, have cut off connections to Russian-linked payment systems, and that’s left companies like Tumar in a lurch. Another wrinkle: With growing concerns over China’s access to US consumer data, platforms handling payments in countries near China — neighboring Kyrgyzstan included — are subject to serious cybersecurity hurdles. And if a payment doesn’t go through on the first attempt, often, there won’t be a second attempt. “We’ve lost many customers for this reason,” Esenbaeva said.
All this to say, Tumar’s old-school web store quickly became obsolete. They figured out they needed to rebuild their site with ISO 27001-compliant back-end infrastructure: encryption protocols, secure socket layers, and a payments gateway capable of navigating cross-border compliance from Central Asia, all in hopes of keeping international customers (and the cybersecurity platforms that protect them) from getting scared out of the purchase flow.
As of January 2025, the entire plan was in place. A new website was launched. They had the money in hand to build out the direct-sale infrastructure. But there was just one catch: The project was being financed by a green business grant from the now gutted and shuttered USAID.
Tumar is hoping that enrolling in Estonia’s e-Residency program will pull their plans for modern, global payment processing out of a death spiral — but they still have about a $35,000 international funding gap to fill with USAID’s dissolution.
On the outskirts of Bishkek, at Tumar’s new wool processing facility, the “break yurt” feels like a step back in time. Workers drink black tea and snack on puffy little squares of fried dough with clotted cream and jam. Right next door, a more modern scene unfolds: sun pours through the oculus in the yurt’s tunduk dome roof onto architectural drawings unfurled on a conference table. Shelves of binders and spiral-bound notebooks lean against the richly colored, shyrdak-lined walls. A flat-bed all-in-one printer, reminiscent of HP circa 2010 — whirs. A similar-vintage, thick-bezeled, matte-black computer monitor and keyboard set-up peeks out from piles of print-outs, a glue stick, an old calculator.
At this new factory, some 100 tons per year of course wool that would have been burned as waste is instead being cleaned and processed. More USAID green business support had been on the way — and it would’ve helped Tumar double the output. Now, they may be on their way to accomplishing that on their own, expanding their product line to include, for example, an entirely biodegradable slipper, and soundproofing and insulation panels (both “no-waste” products made, in part, from slipper scraps). And, importantly to the founders, reliable stocks of high quality raw material that other businesses across the region haven’t previously had access to. Across a stretch of grass from the side-by-side yurts, the warehouse is abuzz with activity.
“We want to open [up] possibilities [for] artisans to get new direct online orders,” and to learn how to maintain quality and consistency as output increases, Makashova said. And the only way they can do it is to keep growing.
There are workshops and small businesses across Central Asia waiting for this raw material to come their way, Esenbaeva said. That means—aside from their own production of felted goods—they’re needing to expand their partnerships with small, family-owned Kyrgyz sheep farms, and increase their capacity for processing wholesale felt. To make it all happen, they’ll need to keep collecting—and building—machines. Esenbaeva laughed, quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “We are responsible for those we tame.”
Netflix’s prices just went up, with its cheapest, ad-supported tier now reaching $8.99 / month (up from $7.99 / month), according to an updated support page spotted earlier by Android Authority. The standard and premium plans are also getting a hike, going from $17.99 to $19.99 / month and $24.99 to $26.99 / month, respectively.
Netflix didn’t share its reasoning for the price hike this time around, as it last cited delivering “more value for our customers.” It’s also unclear when the price hike will go into effect for existing subscribers. The Verge reached out to Netflix with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.
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If you’ve ever wondered how platforms keep up with millions of users at once, this is where things get real. Roblox has over 144 million daily users. That scale creates a massive challenge. Harmful content does not always show up in obvious ways. Sometimes, it is the combination of things that creates the problem. Now, the company is rolling out a new system designed to catch exactly that. But first, it helps to understand what Roblox actually is.
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MEXICAN ILLEGAL ALIEN ALLEGEDLY USED ROBLOX CURRENCY TO SOLICIT EXPLICIT CONTENT FROM KIDS UNDER 10
Roblox rolls out a new AI system that analyzes entire scenes in real time to detect harmful content across its platform. (Brent Lewin/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
What is Roblox
Roblox is an online platform where people can create, share and play games built by other users. Instead of being a single game, it is a massive ecosystem of user-generated experiences that range from simple obstacle courses to complex virtual worlds.
What makes Roblox different is how much control users have. Players are not just consuming content. They are constantly creating it in real time through avatars, text and interactive environments. That constant creation is exactly what makes moderation more complex.
A smarter way to spot harmful content
Most moderation tools look at one thing at a time. A message. An image. An avatar. That approach can miss the bigger picture. Speaking exclusively with CyberGuy, Matt Kaufman, Roblox’s chief safety officer, explained the shift clearly:
“We already moderate all of the objects in a virtual world, but how they come together and interact has long been a challenge. Our new real-time multimodal moderation system looks at an entire scene simultaneously from the user’s point of view – including 3D objects, avatars, and text – capturing all of these elements together in a specific moment to assess whether the combination of content types breaks our rules.”
This is called multimodal moderation. Instead of analyzing pieces in isolation, it looks at everything together in real time.
Why older systems were missing the problem
Here is the issue platforms have faced for years. Something can look harmless on its own. But when combined with other elements, it can become harmful or violate rules.
Kaufman puts it this way: “Traditional AI moderation systems, which moderate one object at a time, can lack context and miss combinations that could be problematic in ways that the individual items are not. This model understands the relationship between different objects and how they come together to catch nuanced violations that standard filters may miss.”
That missing context is exactly what bad actors have been exploiting.
What this new AI actually catches
This system focuses on scenarios that previously slipped through. Think about games where users can draw freely or customize avatars. A drawing alone might seem fine. An avatar alone might seem fine. But together, they could create something inappropriate.
Kaufman explains how the system handles that: “The system can detect combinations of objects that may violate our community standards. For example, some games allow free-form drawing. This real-time multimodal moderation system would look at the drawing, avatar, and 3D setting together and assess it holistically, in order to catch and shut down servers with violating content.”
Right now, the rollout is already targeting problematic avatars and inappropriate drawings.
LOUISIANA SUES ONLINE GAMING PLATFORM ROBLOX FOR ALLEGEDLY ENABLING CHILD PREDATORS
Roblox officials say the new system aims to proactively protect children while maintaining gameplay for compliant users. (Riccardo Milani/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
The scale is bigger than you think
This is not a small tweak. It is operating at a massive scale. Roblox says it is already shutting down about 5,000 servers per day for violations.
Kaufman says that reflects the reality of the platform: “With 144 million users connecting and creating on Roblox every single day, our safety systems must be as agile and dynamic as our creators themselves.”
He also adds an important reality check: “No system is foolproof against bad actors, so we are committed to doing our best to stay ahead of those attempting to bypass safety protocols, and we are working to scale this new multimodal system to capture and monitor 100% of playtime.”
What changes for everyday Roblox users
If you or your kids use Roblox, this system will likely work in the background without you noticing. But it changes how quickly harmful behavior gets stopped.
“When problematic behavior repeatedly occurs in a single game instance, this new system is designed to automatically detect and shut down those specific servers in real time, greatly reducing the number of users who might be exposed to that behavior.”
That last part matters. Instead of shutting down an entire game, it targets only the problem.
“By targeting only the violating server rather than the entire experience, we can help prevent violations from reaching more users while allowing well-intentioned players to continue their sessions uninterrupted.”
What this means for parents
For parents, this is a big shift toward proactive safety. Instead of waiting for reports, the system acts in real time.
Kaufman explains: “We want parents to know that we aren’t just reacting to reports – we are proactively building some of the most sophisticated AI moderation systems in the world to help protect their children in real time.”
There is also an important layer of protection during gameplay: “We can now evaluate a combination of problematic text, 3D drawings, or avatar movements in real-time and shut down that specific server immediately – often before a child ever encounters it.”
Still, Roblox stresses that technology alone is not enough. “No system is perfect, and we encourage parents to talk to their children about online safety.”
Ways parents can help keep kids safe
Even with advanced AI moderation, a few simple steps can help you stay one step ahead and keep your child safer online.
1) Talk about what your child is doing online
Ask what games they play and who they interact with so you stay involved.
2) Encourage reporting anything that feels off
Remind your child to report behavior that seems inappropriate or uncomfortable.
3) Check privacy and safety settings together
Review account settings to limit who can chat or interact with your child.
4) Set clear boundaries for gameplay
Agree on rules around screen time and which types of experiences are allowed.
ROBLOX CEO RESPONDS TO SCRUTINY OVER CHILD SAFETY: ESTABLISHING THE ‘GOLD STANDARD’ FOR SAFETY
Roblox targets nuanced rule-breaking by analyzing avatars, text and environments together instead of in isolation. (JasonDoiy/Getty Images)
How Roblox avoids false positives
One concern with any AI system is getting it wrong. Roblox says it is actively working to improve accuracy over time.
“We have a continuous evaluation loop set up to measure false positives from the multimodal moderation system, and we are training the system with that feedback to help it catch those types of examples in the future.”
User feedback also plays a role. “Our creators and users are often the ones to spot new trends emerging… This type of reporting is the most effective way for users to help protect the community.”
AI plus human oversight still matters
Even with automation, humans are still involved.”We already use a combination of AI and a team of safety experts to review content uploaded to the platform before it is ever shown to users.”
The new system adds another layer, not a replacement. “This real-time multimodal moderation system is an additional layer and is fully automated in its evaluation of the entire scene.”
What about privacy and fairness?
Any system this powerful raises questions about privacy and overreach. Roblox says it is limiting how data is used: “Our systems and processes are designed so that data collected for safety is used only for safety purposes.”
On fairness, the company points to ongoing training and transparency: “We are focused on ensuring our safety systems are both highly effective and fair.”
They are also giving creators more visibility: “We have introduced a new chart in the creator dashboard that allows developers to see exactly how many of their game’s servers have been shut down.”
Where this is heading next
This system is just getting started. One future focus is detecting recreations of real-world events that may cross the line.
Kaufman explains why context matters here: “Standard filters might see a specific building or a line of text in isolation and not recognize a violation. However, real-time multimodal moderation can understand the relationship between an environment, the way avatars are interacting within it, and the accompanying chat.”
There is also a push to go beyond shutting down servers: “We’re working on ways to identify specific bad actors so we can remove them without disrupting the experience for the vast majority of our well-intentioned players.”
Kurt’s key takeaways
This is a major shift in how online platforms approach safety. Instead of reacting after something goes wrong, Roblox is trying to stop harmful behavior before most users ever see it. That is a big promise, especially at this scale. At the same time, it highlights a deeper question about the future of online spaces. As AI becomes more involved in moderating behavior, the balance between safety, fairness and freedom will only get more complicated.
So here is the question worth thinking about: If AI is now deciding what crosses the line in real time, how much control are we comfortable handing over to it? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com
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Technology
Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever
Just how little power might it consume? Notebookcheck has tested a version of the laptop with that LG Display screen and a new Intel Panther Lake chip — and it appears to be the most efficient laptop that’s ever gone through its Wi-Fi web browsing test. At idle, the Core Ultra 325 laptop drew as little as 1.5 watts, and lasted nearly 27 hours of web browsing despite only housing a 70 watt-hour pack. That’s well shy of the 99.5Wh Dell has sometimes crammed into its 16-inch models.
That’s more battery life than Notebookcheck has gotten out of any MacBook or MacBook Pro, and apparently more than all but two other laptops since it started running this test in 2014. And of those two laptops, one relied on a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip, a larger 84Wh battery, and a mere 60Hz screen — while the other had two batteries for a total of 149Wh and a 60Hz screen as well.
I should caution you that we typically see much less battery life in an actual workday than we do in fixed battery life tests. But compared to other laptops, this Dell + Intel + LG Display combo seems like the new battery life champ. Note that Dell also sells it with a higher-res tandem OLED screen, though. To get the best battery life, you’ll need to settle for 1920 x 1200, no OLED, and no touchscreen.
While Dell may deserve a lot of credit as the system integrator, this tech may not be exclusive to Dell for long. LG Display announced that it’s become the first in the world to mass-produce a 1–120Hz laptop LCD panel (which it’s branding as Oxide 1Hz), and plans to mass-produce an OLED version in 2027. Intel, too, isn’t just working with one display vendor: last October, it announced it was working with Chinese panel maker BOE on 1Hz refresh rate computers too.
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