Red crabs walk across a road in Christmas Island, Australia, in October. SYDNEY - Google plans to build a large artificial intelligence data center on Australia's remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island after signing a cloud deal with the Department of Defence earlier this year, according to documents and interviews with officials. Plans for the data center on the tiny island located 350 kilometers south of Indonesia have not previously been reported, and many details including its projected size, cost and potential uses, remain secret. However, military experts say such a facility would be a valuable asset on the island, which is increasingly seen by defense officials as a critical front line in monitoring Chinese submarine and other naval activity in the Indian Ocean. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

The $1 trillion pay agreement puts Elon Musk on track to become the world's first trillionaire. Tesla shareholders approved a $1 trillion compensation package for CEO Elon Musk, the largest payout ever awarded to a corporate leader. More than 75% of votes were cast in favor of the unprecedented pay plan, the company said Thursday at its annual meeting. The outcome caps a weekslong campaign by the electric vehicle maker's board, its CEO and prominent retail investors to build support. The pay agreement clears a path for Musk, the world's richest person, to become the first ever trillionaire and expand his stake in Tesla to 25% or more over the next decade.

'China is going to win the AI race,' Nvidia CEO says: report Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a reception for the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, at St James' Palace in London on Wednesday. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has warned that China will beat the United States in the artificial intelligence race, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. China is going to win the AI race, Huang told the newspaper on the sidelines of the Financial Times' Future of AI Summit. As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI, Huang said in a statement posted on X late on Wednesday. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

ChatGPT nickname and Trump tariffs nominated for Japan's buzzword of 2025 Women hold toys depicting Myaku-Myaku, the official character for the 2025 Osaka Expo, during a media day ahead of the event's public opening day in Osaka in April. A comment made by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi immediately after she was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party last month -- that she would "work, work, work, work and work," which triggered both praise for her determination and criticism amid efforts to improve work-life balance -- also made the list, along with (female prime minister). "There weren't many buzzwords in the first half of the year, but after (U.S.) President Donald Trump returned to office, many phrases went viral regarding tariffs," publisher Jiyukokuminsha, which hosts the award, said in a statement. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Want to feel like you have a new laptop without shelling out hundreds of dollars? A lifetime license to this latest operating system is now just 14.97 (reg. Whoever said you can't teach an old dog new tricks never saw Windows 11 Pro in action. This operating system was made with the modern professional in mind, so it's ready to give your dusty device a new lease on life with improved productivity features. Take advantage of improved voice typing, seamless redocking, snap layouts, and a more powerful search experience with Windows 11 Pro.

This was the year that gen Z had their "Brat summer", or so we were led to believe. Inspired by the hit album by pop sensation Charli xcx, the trend was seen to embody all the messiness of modern youth: trashy, chaotic and bright green. But on the teenager's social media platform of choice, TikTok, a more sepia music trend has been taking root. Despite having an endless amount of music to pair with their short, scrollable videos, TikTok users have been raiding the back catalogues of artists from yesteryear including Bronski Beat and Sade to soundtrack their posts. This year set a new high for use of old tracks on British TikTok posts, with tunes more than five years old accounting for 19 out of its 50 top tracks this year.

The other night, I had an odd conversation with ChatGPT, made somewhat stranger because the AI's answers came out of a humanoid rabbit idly sucking on a juice box. He was standing alone in a virtual novelty store in Second Life, where he had recently been fired. The rabbit, the shop owner explained to me later, was meant to be a clerk, "but he kept trying to sell items that were not for sale." So the rabbit had been demoted to the role of greeter, chatting with customers about the nature of comedy, his own existence, or whatever else they cared to ask. BunnyGPT is among the first bots in the virtual world to have its "mind" wired to OpenAI's large language model.

On 14 November 2006, 5,000 IBM employees assembled in a digital recreation of the 15th-century Chinese imperial palace known as the Forbidden City. They had come to hear IBM's CEO, Sam Palmisano, deliver a speech. Palmisano's physical body was in Beijing at the time, but he addressed most of his audience inside Second Life, the online social world that had launched three years earlier. Palmisano's trim avatar wore tortoiseshell-frame glasses and a tailored pinstripe suit. He faced a crowd of digital, animated dolls dressed in the business attire of the day: black heels, pencil-line shirts, Windsor-knotted ties. Looming out of the throng at the back stood a 10ft IBM employee, his digital face plastered in Gene Simmons-style white makeup, with shoulder-length, Sonic-blue hair. It was a historic moment, a journalist for Bloomberg reported at the time: Palmisano was "the first big-league CEO" to stage a company-wide meeting in Second Life – "the most popular of a handful of new-fangled 3D online virtual worlds". IBM, just like any other denizen of Second Life, paid ground rent to own a "region" of the game, one region representing 6.5 hectares of digital turf, currently rented at $166 (£134) a month.

Metaverse is composed of two words: Meta Verse. To better understand the complex topic of the metaverse, it is worth looking at the etymological origin of the ancient Greek word "meta". Its original meaning is "beyond," transcending, "after," or "behind". Metaphysics, Metacognition are some words that use the prefix "Meta". Metacognition, for example, means to have an awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.

The metaverse is one of the hottest buzzwords in tech, and this far-reaching vision of a next-gen internet will rely upon an entire ecosystem of companies to make it a reality. We cut through the noise to explain what the metaverse is, how it's being built, and who's building it. The business world is obsessed with "the metaverse": the concept of shared worlds driven by virtual products and digital experiences that are highly immersive and interactive. We already have virtual worlds featuring live concerts and online games where players spend hundreds of hours -- but metaverse enthusiasts see a future where entire societies thrive in an online realm inhabited by avatars of real people. While the space is still in early days, the longer-term implications may not be trivial. Some users -- especially younger ones -- may eventually earn, spend, and invest most of their money in digital worlds. The metaverse could represent a $1T market by the end of the decade, according to CB Insights' Industry Analyst Consensus. This dollar potential has caught the attention of players across industries.