text:
Old Hungarian script

The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes (Székely-magyar rovás, 'székely-magyar runiform', or rovásírás) is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Modern Hungarian is written using the Latin-based Hungarian alphabet. The term "old" refers to the historical priority of the script compared with the Latin-based one. The Old Hungarian script is a child system of the Old Turkic alphabet.

The Hungarians settled the Carpathian Basin in 895. After the establishment of the Christian Hungarian kingdom, the old writing system was partly forced out of use during the rule of King Stephen, and the Latin alphabet was adopted. However, among some professions (e.g. shepherds who used a "rovás-stick" to officially track the number of animals) and in Transylvania, the script has remained in use by the Székely Magyars, giving its Hungarian name (székely) rovásírás. The writing could also be found in churches, such as that in the commune of Atid.

Its English name in the ISO 15924 standard is Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic).

Name
In modern Hungarian, the script is known formally as Székely rovásírás ('Szekler script'). The writing system is generally known as rovásírás, székely rovásírás, and székely-magyar írás (or simply rovás 'notch, score').

Origins
Scientists cannot give an exact date or origin for the script.

Linguist András Róna-Tas derives Old Hungarian from the Old Turkic script, itself recorded in inscriptions dating from c. AD 720. The origins of the Turkic scripts are uncertain. The scripts may be derived from the Pahlavi and Sogdian alphabets, or possibly from Kharosthi, all of which are in turn derived from the Aramaic script. Alternatively, according to some opinions, ancient Turkic runes descend from primaeval Turkic graphic logograms.

Speakers of Proto-Hungarian would have come into contact with Turkic peoples during the 7th or 8th century, in the context of the Turkic expansion, as is also evidenced by numerous Turkic loanwords in Proto-Hungarian.

All the letters but one for sounds which were shared by Turkic and Ancient Hungarian can be related to their Old Turkic counterparts. Most of the missing characters were derived by script internal extensions, rather than borrowings, but a small number of characters seem to derive from Greek, such as 'eF'.

The modern Hungarian term for this script (coined in the 19th century), rovás, derives from the verb róni ('to score') which is derived from old Uralic, general Hungarian terminology describing the technique of writing (írni 'to write', betű 'letter', bicska 'knife, also: for carving letters') derive from Turkic, which further supports transmission via Turkic alphabets.

Medieval Hungary
Epigraphic evidence for the use of the Old Hungarian script in medieval Hungary dates to the 10th century, for example, from Homokmégy. The latter inscription was found on a fragment of a quiver made of bone. Although there have been several attempts to interpret it, the meaning of it is still unclear.

In 1000, with the coronation of Stephen I of Hungary, Hungary (previously an alliance of mostly nomadic tribes) became a kingdom. The Latin alphabet was adopted as official script; however, Old Hungarian continued to be used in the vernacular.

The runic script was first mentioned in the 13th century Chronicle of Simon of Kéza, where he stated that the Székelys may use the script of the Blaks. Johannes Thuróczy wrote in the Chronica Hungarorum that the Székelys did not forget the Scythian letters and these are engraved on sticks by carving.

"There were still three thousand Huns who fled the battle of Crimhild, who fearing from the western nations, they remained on the cliff field until the time of Árpád, and they did not call themselves Huns, but Szekelys. These Szekelys were the remains of the Huns, who when they learned that the Hungarians had returned to Pannonia for the second time, went to the returnees on the border of Ruthenia and conquered Pannonia together, but not on the Pannonian plane, they were granted estates in the mountainous borderlands together with the Blackis, where mingling with the Blackis it is said they used their letters."

"It is said that in addition to the Huns who escorted Csaba, from the same nation, three thousand more people retreating, cut themselves out of the said battle, remained in Pannonia, and first established themself in a camp called Csigla's Field. They were afraid of the Western nations which they harassed in Attila's life, and they marched to Transylvania, the frontier of the Pannonian landscape, and they did not call themselves Huns or Hungarians, but Siculus, in their own word Székelys, so that they would not know that they are the remnants of the Huns or Hungarians. In our time, no one doubts, that the Székelys are the remnants of the Huns who first came to Pannonia, and because their people do not seem to have been mixed with foreign blood since then, they are also more strict in their morals, they also differ from other Hungarians in the division of lands. They have not yet forgotten the Scythian letters, and these are not inked on paper, but engraved on sticks skillfully, in the way of the carving. They later grew into not insignificant people, and when the Hungarians came to Pannonia again from Scythia, they went to Ruthenia in front of them with great joy, as soon as the news of their coming came to them. When the Hungarians took possession of Pannonia again, at the division of the country, with the consent of the Hungarians, these Székelys were given the part of the country that they had already chosen as their place of residence."

Early Modern period
The Old Hungarian script became part of folk art in several areas during this period. In Royal Hungary, Old Hungarian script was used less, although there are relics from this territory, too. There is another copy – similar to the Nikolsburg Alphabet – of the Old Hungarian alphabet, dated 1609. The inscription from Énlaka, dated 1668, is an example of the "folk art use".

There are a number of inscriptions ranging from the 17th to the early 19th centuries, including examples from Kibéd, Csejd, Makfalva, Szolokma, Marosvásárhely, Csíkrákos, Mezőkeresztes, Nagybánya, Torda, Felsőszemeréd, Kecskemét and Kiskunhalas.

Scholarly discussion
Hungarian script was first described in late Humanist/Baroque scholarship by János Telegdy in his primer Rudimenta Priscae Hunnorum Linguae. Published in 1598, Telegdi's primer presents his understanding of the script and contains Hungarian texts written with runes, such as the Lord's Prayer.

In the 19th century, scholars began to research the rules and the other features of the Old Hungarian script. From this time, the name rovásírás ('runic writing') began to re-enter the popular consciousness in Hungary, and script historians in other countries began to use the terms "Old Hungarian", Altungarisch, and so on. Because the Old Hungarian script had been replaced by Latin, linguistic researchers in the 20th century had to reconstruct the alphabet from historic sources. Gyula Sebestyén, an ethnographer and folklorist, and Gyula (Julius) Németh, a philologist, linguist, and Turkologist, did the lion's share of this work. Sebestyén's publications, Rovás és rovásírás (Runes and runic writing, Budapest, 1909) and A magyar rovásírás hiteles emlékei (The authentic relics of Hungarian runic writing, Budapest, 1915) contain valuable information on the topic.

Popular revival
Beginning with Adorján Magyar in 1915, the script has been promulgated as a means for writing modern Hungarian. These groups approached the question of representation of the vowels of modern Hungarian in different ways. Adorján Magyar made use of characters to distinguish a/á and e/é but did not distinguish the other vowels by length. A school led by Sándor Forrai from 1974 onward did, however, distinguish i/í, o/ó, ö/ő, u/ú, and ü/ű. The revival has become part of a significant ideological nationalist subculture present not only in Hungary (largely centered in Budapest), but also amongst the Hungarian diaspora, particularly in the United States and Canada.

Old Hungarian has seen other usages in the modern period, sometimes in association with or referencing Hungarian neopaganism, similar to the way in which Norse neopagans have taken up the Germanic runes, and Celtic neopagans have taken up the ogham script for various purposes.

Controversies
Not all scholars agree with the "Old Hungarian" notion, mainly based on the actual literary facts. The linguist and sociolinguist Klára Sándor told in an interview that most of the "romantic" statements about the script appear to be false. According to her analysis, the origin of the writing is probably runiform (and with high probability its origins are in the western Turkic runiform writings) and it's not a different writing system and contrary to the sentiment the writing is neither Hungarian nor Székely-Hungarian; it is a Székely writing since there are no authentic findings outside the historic Székely lands (mainly today's Transylvania); the only writing found around 1000 AD had a different writing system. While it may have been sporadically used in Hungary its usage was not widespread. The "revived" writing (in the 1990s) was artificially expanded with (various) "new" letters which were unneeded in the past since the writing was cleanly phonetic, or the long vowels which were not present back in the time. The shape of many letters were substantially changed from the original. She stated that no works since 1915 have reached the expected quality of the state of the linguistic sciences, and many were influenced by various agendas.

The use of the script often has a political undertone as it is often used along with irredentist or nationalist propaganda, and they can be found from time to time in graffiti with a variety of content. Since most of the people cannot read the script it has led to various controversies, for example when the activists of the Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party (opposition) exchanged the rovas sign of the city Érd to szia 'Hi!', which stayed unnoticed for a month.

Epigraphy

The inscription corpus includes:
 * A labeled crest etched into stone from Pécs, late 13th century (Label: aBA SZeNTjeI vaGYUNK aKI eSZTeR ANna erZSéBeT; We are the saints [nuns] of Aba; who are Esther, Anna and Elizabeth.)
 * Rod calendar, around 1300, copied by Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli in 1690. It contains several feasts and names, thus it is one of the most extensive runic records.
 * Nicholsburg alphabet
 * Runic record in Istanbul, 1515.
 * Székelyderzs: a brick with runic inscription, found in the Unitarian church
 * Énlaka runic inscription, discovered by Balázs Orbán in 1864
 * Székelydálya: runic inscription, found in the Calvinist church
 * The inscription from Felsőszemeréd (Horné Semerovce), Slovakia (15th century)

Characters
The runic alphabet included 42 letters. As in the Old Turkic script, some consonants had two forms, one to be used with back vowels (a, á, o, ó, u, ú) and another for front vowels (e, é, i, í, ö, ő, ü, ű). The names of the consonants are always pronounced with a vowel. In the old alphabet, the consonant-vowel order is reversed, unlike today's pronunciation (ep rather than pé). This is because the oldest inscriptions lacked vowels and were rarely written down, similar to other ancient languages' consonant-writing systems (Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.). The alphabet did not contain letters for the phonemes dz and dzs of modern Hungarian, since these are relatively recent developments in the language's history. Nor did it have letters corresponding to the Latin q, w, x and y. The modern revitalization movement has created symbols for these; in Unicode encoding, they are represented as ligatures.

For more information about the transliteration's pronunciation, see Hungarian alphabet.

The Old Hungarian runes also include some non-alphabetical runes which are not ligatures but separate signs. These are identified in some sources as "capita dictionum" (likely a misspelling of capita dicarum ). Further research is needed to define their origin and traditional usage. Some common examples are:
 * TPRUS: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter TPRUS.svg|14px]]
 * ENT: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter ENT.svg|14px]]
 * TPRU: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter TPRU.svg|16px]]
 * NAP: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter NAP.svg|16px]]
 * EMP: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter EMP.svg|16px]]
 * UNK: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter UNK.svg|16px]]
 * US: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter US.png|14px]]
 * AMB: [[Image:Szekely-Hungarian Rovas letter AMB.svg|16px]]

Features
Old Hungarian letters were usually written from right to left on sticks. Later, in Transylvania, they appeared on several media. Writings on walls also were right to left and not boustrophedon style (alternating direction right to left and then left to right).

The numbers are almost the same as the Roman, Etruscan, and Chuvash numerals. Numbers of livestock were carved on tally sticks and the sticks were then cut in two lengthwise to avoid later disputes.

 * Ligatures are common. (Note: the Hungarian runic script employed a number of ligatures. In some cases, an entire word was written with a single sign similar to a bind rune.) The Unicode standard supports ligatures explicitly by using the zero width joiner between the two characters.
 * There are no lower or upper case letters, but the first letter of a proper name was often written a bit larger. Though the Unicode standard has upper and lowercase letters, which are the same in shape, the difference is only their size.
 * The writing system did not always mark vowels (similar to many Asian writing systems). The rules for vowel inclusion were as follows:
 * If there are two vowels side by side, both have to be written, unless the second could be readily determined.
 * The vowels have to be written if their omission created ambiguity. (Example: krk – can be interpreted as kerék –  (wheel) and kerek –  (rounded), thus the writer had to include the vowels to differentiate the intended words.)
 * The vowel at the end of the word must be written.
 * Sometimes, especially when writing consonant clusters, a consonant was omitted. This is a phonologic process, with the script reflecting the exact surface realization.

Text example
Text from Csíkszentmárton, 1501. Runes originally written as ligatures are underlined.

Unicode transcription:

Interpretation in old Hungarian: "ÚRNaK SZÜLeTéSéTÜL FOGVÁN ÍRNaK eZeRÖTSZÁZeGY eSZTeNDŐBE MÁTYáS JÁNOS eSTYTáN KOVÁCS CSINÁLTáK MÁTYáSMeSTeR GeRGeLYMeSTeRCSINÁLTÁK G IJ A aS I LY LY LT A " (The letters actually written in the runic text are written with uppercase in the transcription.)

Interpretation in modern Hungarian: "(Ezt) az Úr születése utáni 1501. évben írták. Mátyás, János, István kovácsok csinálták. Mátyás mester (és) Gergely mester csinálták gijas ily ly lta"

English translation: "(This) was written in the 1501st year of our Lord. The smiths Matthias, John (and) Stephen did (this). Master Matthias (and) Master Gregory did (uninterpretable)

Unicode
After many proposals Old Hungarian/Szekely-Hungarian Rovas Ad Hoc Committee: Old Hungarian/Sekely-Hungarian Rovas Ad hoc Report, 2012-11-12
 * Jenő Demeczky, György Giczi, Gábor Hosszú, Gergely Kliha, Borbála Obrusánszky, Tamás Rumi, László Sípos, Erzsébet Zelliger: About the consensus of the Rovas encoding – Response to N4373 (Resolutions of the 8th Hungarian World Congress on the encoding of Old Hungarian). Registered by UTC (L2/12-337), 2012-10-24
 * György Gergely Gyetvay (World Federation of Hungarians): Resolutions of the 8th Hungarian World Congress on the encoding of Old Hungarian, 2012-10-22
 * Jenő Demeczky, György Giczi, Gábor Hosszú, Gergely Kliha, Borbála Obrusánszky, Tamás Rumi, László Sípos, Erzsébet Zelliger: Additional information about the name of the Rovas script, 2012-10-21.
 * Jenő Demeczky, Gábor Hosszú, Tamás Rumi, László Sípos, Erzsébet Zelliger: Revised proposal for encoding the Rovas in the UCS, 2012-10-14.
 * Tamás Somfai: Contemporary Rovas in the word processing, 2012-05-25
 * Michael Everson & André Szabolcs Szelp: Consolidated proposal for encoding the Old Hungarian script in the UCS, 2012-05-06
 * Miklós Szondi (president of the "Természetesen" society and chair of the "Egységes rovás" conference) Declaration of Support for the Advancement of the Encoding of the old Hungarian Script, 2012-04-28
 * Gábor Hosszú (Hungarian National Body): Code chart font for Rovas block, 2012-02-06
 * André Szabolcs Szelp: Remarks on Old Hungarian and other scripts with regard to N4183, 2012-01-30
 * Michael Everson (Irish National Body): Code chart fonts for Old Hungarian, 2012-01-28
 * Gábor Hosszú (Hungarian National Body): Proposal for encoding the Szekely-Hungarian Rovas, Carpathian Basin Rovas and Khazarian Rovas scripts into the Rovas block in the SMP of the UCS, 2011-12-15
 * Hungarian Runic/Szekely-Hungarian Rovas Ad Hoc Committee: Hungarian Runic/Sekely-Hungarian Rovas Ad-hoc Report, 2011-06-08
 * Gábor Hosszú: Issues of encoding the Rovas scripts, 2011-05-25
 * Gábor Hosszú: Comments on encoding the Rovas scripts, 2011-05-22
 * Gábor Hosszú: Revised proposal for encoding the Szekely-Hungarian Rovas script in the SMP of the UCS, 2011-05-21
 * Gábor Hosszú: Notes on the Szekely-Hungarian Rovas script, 2011-05-15
 * Michael Everson & André Szabolcs Szelp: Mapping between Hungarian Runic proposals in N3697 and N4007, 2011-05-08
 * Deborah Anderson: Comparison of Hungarian Runic and Szekely‐Hungarian Rovas proposals, 2011-05-07
 * Deborah Anderson: Outstanding Issues on Old Hungarian/Szekler‐Hungarian Rovas/Hungarian Native Writing, 2009-04-22
 * Michael Everson: Mapping between Old Hungarian proposals in N3531, N3527, and N3526, 2008-11-02
 * Michael Everson and Szabolcs Szelp: Revised proposal for encoding the Old Hungarian script in the UCS = Javított előterjesztés a rovásírás Egyetemes Betűkészlet-beli kódolására), 2008-10-12
 * Gábor Hosszú: Proposal for encoding the Szekler-Hungarian Rovas in the BMP and the SMP of the UCS, 2008-10-04
 * Gábor Bakonyi: Hungarian native writing draft proposal, 2008-09-30
 * Michael Everson and Szabolcs Szelp: Preliminary proposal for encoding the Old Hungarian script in the UCS, 2008-08-04
 * Michael Everson: On encoding the Old Hungarian rovásírás in the UCS, 1998-05-02
 * Michael Everson: Draft Proposal to encode Old Hungarian in Plane 1 of ISO/IEC 10646-2, 1998-01-18 Old Hungarian was added to the Unicode Standard in June, 2015 with the release of version 8.0.

The Unicode block for Old Hungarian is U+10C80–U+10CFF:

Pre-Unicode encodings
A set of closely related 8-bit code pages exist, devised in the 1990s by Gabor Hosszú. These were mapped to Latin-1 or Latin-2 character set fonts. After installing one of them and applying their formatting to the document – because of the lack of capital letters – runic characters could be entered in the following way: those letters which are unique letters in today's Hungarian orthography are virtually lowercase ones, and can be written by simply pressing the specific key; and since the modern digraphs equal to separate rovás letters, they were encoded as 'uppercase' letters, i.e. in the space originally restricted for capitals. Thus, typing a lowercase g will produce the rovás character for the sound marked with Latin script g, but entering an uppercase G will amount to a rovás sign equivalent to a digraph gy in Latin-based Hungarian orthography.

title: Old Hungarian script


text:
Talk:Mac the Knife

Untitled
For several years during the 90s I was the editor of the Mac the Knife column. (Not the *author* mind you. I was the fuddy-duddy who had to reign the midget it when he went to far.) As such, I can confirm that the Knife was a real, live human being rather than some writing-by-committee construct.

Stephen Howard-Sarin former exec. editor of MacWEEK stephen@undefinedOct17.com

 * Wow. Thanks for posting that.  I am truly in awe.  Back while you were the editor, my college buddies and I would always try to steal the copy of MacWEEK from the desk of the campus IT boss.  We spent many hours at the helpdesk reading the magazine.

 * Jason Whong
 * (Macintosh game publishing community fixture)''

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Mac the Knife. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://macweek.zdnet.com/opinion/opinion_knife.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061018121442/http://www.ilenesmachine.com/macworld/ny01/macworldny01.shtml to http://www.ilenesmachine.com/macworld/ny01/macworldny01.shtml

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 11:02, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Mac the Knife


text:
Cyberport

Cyberport is a business park in Southern District, Hong Kong, consisting of four office buildings, a hotel, and a retail entertainment complex. It describes itself as a digital technology community with over 1,800 (800 on-site and 1,000 off-site) digital and technology companies.

The Cyberport project has courted controversy since its inception because of the government bypassing the open-tender process in awarding the project to real estate developer Richard Li Tzar-Kai, and also because of its reliance on "ancillary residential" revenue. In recent years, Cyberport has developed as a digital technology flagship and key incubator for entrepreneurship in Hong Kong.

Digital technology community
Six start-ups from Cyberport, namely GOGOX, KLOOK, WeLab, TNG, Animoca Brands and ZA International, have emerged as "unicorns", spanning categories of fintech, smart living, digital entertainment and esports. Cyberport is managed by Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited, which is wholly owned by the Hong Kong SAR Government.

In operation since 2004, Cyberport focuses on fintech, smart living, digital entertainment and esports, AI and big data, blockchain, and cybersecurity. Cyberport is currently home to the largest Fintech community in Hong Kong with around 400 Fintech companies. Bowtie, a member of the Cyberport community, was authorised by the Hong Kong Insurance Authority to become Hong Kong's first virtual insurer under the Fast Track system in November 2018. Zhong An and WeLab, who are also members of Cyberport, were two of the initial eight financial institutions and firms to be granted a virtual bank license.

To promote the development of esports in Hong Kong, Cyberport launched the opening of Hong Kong's largest professional-grade esports venue on 16 July 2019 located in the Cyberport Arcade. It also launched the Esports Industry Facilitation Scheme and the Esports Internship Scheme. The former offers cash grants to support industry activities, while the latter provides a cash subsidy for internships in the esports industry.

As of February 2022, Cyberport Incubation Programme had incubated and funded over 1,000 technology start-ups companies since its inception in 2005. The Cyberport Macro Fund was announced in 2016 to support local start-ups after seed stage but generally before or around Series A stage of funding. The fund, which received a further injection of HK$200 million by Cyberport and its scope extended to cover Series A and later stage investments, has, as of July 2022, invested in 22 start-ups totalling about HK$168 million, driving a co-investment ratio of 1:8.

On 25 March, the Hong Kong SAR Government announced that Simon Chan Sai-ming would succeed Dr George Lam as chairman of the board of directors of the Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited from April 1, 2022, to March 31, 2024.

Cyberport currently comprises four phases, providing a total of 119,000 square metres of office space. As of May 2021, the occupancy rate of Cyberport's office and co-working space has consistently maintained occupancy rates at 90% and 95%, respectively. The number of applications for the "Cyberport Incubation Programme" has substantially increased from less than 100 per year before 2011 to over 600 per year in recent years.

Project background
In March 1999, the Hong Kong government announced its intention to develop a "Cyberport", to help local businesses capitalise on the rapid growth of the Internet. The government called it a development where information technology and multimedia would be nurtured so that future demands of these industries could be met. According to the press release by the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, only one-third of the site would be residential, the sale of which would help finance the Cyberport development. The Cyberport is billed as home to an incubator for ICT startups, providing office space, financial aid, training, micro fund and network access to the investment community.

The Hong Kong government inked a partnership deal with the Pacific Century Group (PCG) to develop a 26 ha site with open sea view at Telegraph Bay in Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong Island, at a total cost of HK$13 billion. It was announced as part of the 1999 budget by then-Financial Secretary Donald Tsang. It was also hoped that this development would help the HKSAR's economy rebound after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and bring a "strategic cluster of information technology and services companies situated in a world-class setting". The "strategic telecommunication node" was due to be formed due to its close proximity to the proposed "Teleport" in Chung Hom Kok. Touted benefits include "a range of shared facilities for tenants, including a multimedia-based network, telecommunication links, media laboratory, cyber library and other information technology and services support facilities. There will also be educational, entertainment and recreational facilities related to information technology and services for local visitors and tourists".

As part of the deal, PCG would construct a 990000 sqft office complex with a 300000 sqft shopping mall and a 173-room hotel that would be put out to management. Title to these properties would be transferred to the government at zero cost, while PCG received land for 4500000 sqft of residential housing in exchange, and would reap 64.5 percent of the profits from their sale.

The construction of the Cyberport portion consisting of four office buildings, The Arcade and Le Meridien Cyberport Hotel, was completed in phases between 2002 and 2004. The residential developments consist of approximately 2,800 units or houses completed in phases between 2004 and 2008.

Awarding the project without formal open tender
The government's decision in granting the project to Pacific Century Group (PCG) controlled by Richard Li, son of Hong Kong's wealthiest man Li Ka-shing, to develop the site generated much controversy. Awarding the project to PCG without a formal open tender attracted criticism for lack of transparency; other interested developers complained of being sidelined. Three private and wholly owned companies, namely, Hong Kong Cyberport Development Holdings Limited, Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited and Hong Kong Cyberport (Ancillary Development) Limited (collectively referred to as the "Cyberport companies") were set up under the Financial Secretary Incorporated (FSI) to oversee implementation of the project. The project was criticised as unnecessary government intervention in the real estate sector.

Residential project disguised as tech hub
According to critics, Cyberport was a residential project in disguise, as it arguably failed in its mission to become a high-technology hub for the city. Eurasia Review suggested that the government land was injected into the project below value. The overall rationale of the project has been questioned by its critics, as details have emerged about the planning and budgeting for the project that indicate that 75% of the area developed is residential, and that office space for the technology companies was only about 17% of the total. Also the "shared facilities" made up only part of a small 18000 sqm block which includes houses and apartments.

Low occupancy of rental office towers
The project had the reputation of a "ghost town", as the government-owned portion suffered low occupancy. Fifteen companies signed letters of intent with the developer, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo, but only three moved in at the initial opening, due to a technology slump. The government rejected accusations of favouritism, arguing that PCG's presence as an anchor tenant would be a marketing plus to prestigious international technology companies. In addition, tendering was bypassed ostensibly to shorten the sensitive time frame to bring forward the economic benefits of the project. PCG later hived off the residential property interests into a shell company separate from the telecoms operation so that the shell company would receive the residential housing sales revenues; it was also accorded right of first refusal to redevelop sites of 60 existing telephone exchanges of PCCW, the telecoms operator. In October 2004, David Webb cited lack of transparency in the government's business dealings and demanded audited financial accounts and directors' reports for three companies related to the project to be released under the non-statutory Code on Access to Information.

Data hack
In September 2023, media reported that Cyberport had suffered a hack, where the attackers took around 400GB of personal data. Cyberport initially declined to reveal that personal information was exposed, saying it did not want to cause "unnecessary concern." A cybersecurity expert said "This attack could have been avoided because the loopholes and incorrect settings that enabled the attack are from two to three years ago, if not earlier. This should not have happened." A former employee of Cyberport said "There has been no apology from the management, no one has had to step down. They are only issuing statements and holing up."

Cyberport CEO Peter Yan King-shun said that the hack was limited to "some information stored in some parts of some servers" and said there was no evidence of human error; a former employee said "[Yan] didn't acknowledge Cyberport's lack of cybersecurity measures to protect staff and start-ups' information. He didn't apologise. Only the chairman sort of apologised."

SCMP released an editorial, saying "The delay in disclosing last month's incident underlines the lack of urgency and sensitivity on the part of management. This was also reflected in a suggestion that data was stolen from a shared drive with presumably less protection."

Expansion
In 2019, after the government announced the Cyberport Expansion project, Cyberport repeatedly promised to consult with local residents and the Southern District Council regarding the design of its waterfront park. However, in September 2023, local media reported that Cyberport had declined to attend the Meeting of the Economy, Development, and Planning Committee of the Southern District Council both in 2021 and 2023.

In June 2021, District Councilor Paul Zimmerman manually photographed each page of Cyberport's expansion plans, as they had refused to provide a digital copy. Later in 2023, Zimmerman revealed 8 broken promises and lies made by Cyberport, and said "It is regrettable that Cyberport and ITIB have continuously failed to honour their commitments to consult the community on the park's redesign. With a project of HK$5.5 billion impacting such a beloved park, it is disconcerting that Cyberport, with its technological prowess, has been unable to create a dedicated website providing comprehensive information, visuals, timelines, and contacts. The exclusion of the Pokfulam community from the park's design process, along with the restriction of their participation, is simply unjust."

Housing

Bel-Air is a luxury residential development in Cyberport. The development is split into six phases; phase 1 and 2 are referred to as Residence Bel-Air and Phase 3 is referred to as Bel-Air on the Peak. Phase 1 and 2 each have a clubhouse and seven blocks that are about 48 floors tall. Floor 40 and above are flats that have the area of two flats combined into one, creating over 3200 sqft. All of which feature sky gardens with ocean views. Enumeration of "Block 4" and all fourth floors of each block has been avoided for superstitious reasons. However, the management company neglected to omit 4 when naming the construction phases.

Each floor of "Bel-Air on the Peak" has two or three apartments, two larger units, 'A' and 'C' and a smaller two-bedroom unit 'B'. The clubhouse of "Bel-Air on the Peak" is significantly newer with more artistic features. They maintain an indoor pool, gym, restaurant, snooker room and children's game room.

Bel-Air has 2 clubhouses: the Bay Wing and Peak Wing. They feature a spa, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, game's room, gym, children's playroom, restaurant and personal cinema. Each floor of the "Residence Bel-Air" has two flats with three bedrooms, a kitchen and a balcony. Additionally, there are single-family homes near "Residence Bel-Air".

title: Cyberport