Tesla will partner with French renewable energy company Neoen to build the 100-megawatt battery farm in South Australia state. After a successful run selling hats, billionaire Elon Musk's The Boring Company has expanded its offering to include flamethrowers. Musk announced that his infrastructure firm had started selling flamethrowers Sunday. People were able to pre-order them for $500 each, and could buy an "overpriced" fire extinguisher with a "cool sticker" for £30 as well. A flamethrower being offered for sale by Elon Musk and The Boring Company.

It's a type of fish, this one several feet long, with rows of sharp, serrated teeth that it uses to clamp down on prey. Sharks, specifically great whites, were catapulted into the public eye with the release of the film Jaws in the summer of 1975. The film is the story of a massive great white that terrorizes a seaside community, and the image of the cover alone--the exposed jaws of a massive shark rising upward in murky water--is enough to inject fear into the hearts of would-be swimmers. Other thrillers have perpetuated the theme of sharks as villans. We're going to need a bigger boat: Take a look at the design history of Jaws and its iconic cover https://t.co/dRdRPILF7L

The wait is finally over. Apple's first smart speaker, the HomePod, became available for pre-order online in the US, UK and Australia on Friday. The firm announced earlier this week that its £319 ($349) voice-activated device will go on sale on starting February 9th. But Apple fans who are eager to get their hands on the HomePod early can place an order beginning today. Apple's £319 ($349) 'HomePad' smart speaker is set to go on sale on 9th February in the US, UK and Australia.

Thu 9 Nov 2017 20.44 EST Last modified on Thu 9 Nov 2017 21.05 EST Thousands of online scammers around the globe are being fooled by artificial intelligence bots posing as New Zealanders and created by the country's internet watchdog to protect it from "phishing" scams. Chatbots that use distinct New Zealand slang such as "aye" have been deployed by Netsafe in a bid to engage scammers in protracted email exchanges that waste their time, gather intelligence and lure them away from actual victims. Computer programmers at Netsafe spent more than a year designing the bots as part of their Re:scam initiative, which went live on Wednesday. Within 24 hours 6,000 scam emails had been sent to the Re:scam email address and there were 1000 active conversations taking place between scammers and chatbots. So far, the longest exchange between a scammer and a chatbot pretending to be a New Zealander was 20 emails long.

Quantcast, an AI technology company focused on the marketing and publishing industries, announced that it will expand its advertising solutions into seven markets across Asia, connecting brands with an online audience of up to 300 million consumers. The company already operates in Australia and New Zealand. Marketers across Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand will now be able to tap into Quantcast's live data insights drawn from more than 100 million online destinations to drive more effective brand awareness and performance campaigns. Andrew Double, Quantcast's Australia and New Zealand Managing Director, will taking on an expanded role to lead the company's growth in the Asia-Pacific region. Konrad Feldman, Quantcast's Chief Executive Officer and Founder commented, "Marketing is at a tipping point with AI set to transform every customer experience, every company and every industry. Marketers in APAC are looking for better ways to engage digital audiences that are both efficient and effective. We're excited to help brands and their agency partners leverage the power of Q, our audience behavior platform."

In 1997, Garry Kasparov famously lost his rematch with IBM's Deep Blue, marking the first time a reigning world champion had been defeated by a program under tournament conditions. Much of the press that followed was predictably hyperbolic, with headlines questioning whether a "Terminator scenario" was just around the corner. Twenty years on, the potential danger posed by powerful AI is in the spotlight once again. It's a concern that leads to the fourth and final question of this mini-series: if we cannot align AI with our own goals and values, do these systems need an off switch? To help explore this issue of AI safety, Ian Sample calls on a trio of experts, including the University of New South Wales's professor of artificial intelligence Toby Walsh, the University of Oxford's Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Dr Yasemin J. Erden from St Mary's University in Twickenham.

Tue 23 Jan 2018 12.47 EST Last modified on Tue 23 Jan 2018 14.35 EST The computer scientist Mary Lee Berners-Lee, who has died aged 93, was on the programming team for the computer that in 1951 became the first in the world to be sold commercially: the Ferranti Mark I. She led a successful campaign at Ferranti for equal pay for male and female programmers, almost two decades before the Equal Pay Act came into force. As a young mother in the mid-1950s she set up on her own as a home-based software consultant, making her one of the world's first freelance programmers. Modest about her own pioneering achievements, she is on record (in an interview with computer historian Janet Abbate) as saying that her biggest contribution was to be "the grandmother of the web". In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Tim), the eldest of her four children, proposed a system to access and exchange documents across the internet, and soon afterwards built the first web server, website and browser.

Kangaroo Kapital is the largest credit card company in Australia. Animals across the continent use Kangaroo Kapital credit cards to make all of their daily purchases, racking up points in the company's reward system. Since Australian animals have traditionally not worn much clothing, the challenges of carrying around cash are substantial. Only having to keep track of a single credit card is a big help for your average working wallaby. But since Australian animals have typically not worn much clothing, they still have a problem keeping track of even a single credit card.

Apple is finally ready to launch its attempt to compete with the internet-connected speakers made by Amazon and Google with the release of its long-awaited HomePod. Pre-orders for the HomePod will begin Friday in the U.S, U.K. and Australia, two weeks before the speaker goes on sale in stores for $349. Apple had intended to release the HomePod last month during the holiday shopping season, but delayed its debut to refine the product. Both Amazon's Echo and Google's Home speakers have been expanding their reach into people's homes since Apple announced the HomePod last June. Amazon and Google also are selling their speakers for substantially less, with streamlined versions of their devices available for below $50.

Siri's news reading feature is no longer limited to the beta testing crowd. Apple has officially released iOS 11.2.5, and the centerpiece is the ability to ask Siri for the latest happenings. If you're in the US, UK or Australia, you can get a briefing from a slew of local sources, such as NPR and the Washington Post in the states or the BBC and Sky News in the UK. And it doesn't have to be general news, either -- you can ask for business, music or sports news as well. Not surprisingly, 11.2.5 is also key to unlocking support for the HomePod speaker.