Tag - tech

 
 

TECH

SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son meets with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Friday in Seoul.
BUSINESS
Dec 5, 2025
SoftBank Group CEO meets with South Korean president
The pair discussed cooperation in the fields of AI and semiconductors, as well as infrastructure investment.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at an annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in September last year.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 5, 2025
Meta’s Zuckerberg plans deep cuts for metaverse efforts
The metaverse effort was once framed as the future of the company and was the reason for the company changing its name from Facebook.
Chips at a booth in a mall of the Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, on Oct. 30. Many Chinese smartphone makers are warning of price increases.
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Dec 3, 2025
The AI frenzy is driving a new global supply chain crisis
Japanese electronics stores have begun limiting how many hard-disk drives shoppers can buy while Chinese smartphone makers are warning of price increases.
Amazon's AWS is the largest seller of rented computing power and data storage.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 3, 2025
Amazon rushes out latest AI chip to take on Nvidia and Google
The chip push is a key element of Amazon’s strategy to stand out in AI.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. reported the alleged theft to the authorities this year, triggering a probe that’s cast a spotlight on the sensitive nature of chipmaking technology.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 2, 2025
Taiwan charges Tokyo Electron in TSMC secrets theft case
The development escalates a dispute involving two Asian linchpins of a chip industry increasingly vital to national and economic security.
Social media, the internet and other modern-day pressures like digital overload, complexity and declining community ties are fueling loneliness and mental strain across Western societies.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2025
The West is facing fearsome new ‘giants’
The old postwar “Five Giants” have been defeated, but new challenges — loneliness, addiction, distraction, lies and complexity — threaten Western societies.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group, speaks during the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute Priority Asia conference in Tokyo on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 2, 2025
SoftBank’s Son ‘cried’ about Nvidia stake sale to fund AI bets
Son, addressing for the first time the surprise disclosure that SoftBank had unloaded its stake in the world’s most valuable company, also slammed talk of an AI investment bubble.
Pope Leo XIV prays at the Tomb of Saint Francis in Assisi, Italy, last month. The Vatican is pushing a global conversation on how AI can uphold human dignity and serve the common good. 
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2025
The Vatican’s voice of reason on artificial intelligence
The Vatican is pushing a global conversation on how AI can uphold human dignity and serve the common good, echoing the Church’s historic responses to past technological upheavals.
A rare earths processing plant in Dingnan County, Ganzhou, in eastern China's Jiangxi province on Nov. 20. The U.S. is looking to cut its dependence on China.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 2, 2025
U.S. moves to deepen minerals supply chain in AI race with China
The initiative, which builds on efforts dating back to the first administration of President Donald Trump, unfolds as the U.S. looks to cut its dependence on China.
A leaflet made by the Metropolitan Police Department explains its Digi Police crime prevention app.
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2025
Tokyo police app blocks incoming international calls to help combat fraud
When the new feature is enabled, the app automatically blocks international calls and calls from numbers Tokyo police know have been used for fraud.
An aerial view of an Amazon Web Services Data Center known as U.S. East 1 in Ashburn, Virginia, on Oct. 20
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 1, 2025
Keeping cool: Heat a key challenge for data centers and AI
An outage at the world’s biggest exchange operator, CME Group, has put a spotlight on data centers overheating.
Yumi Matsutoya began her decades-long career under her maiden name, Yumi Arai, but Japanese fans might know her better as “Yuming.”
CULTURE / Music / Longform
Dec 1, 2025
Yumi Matsutoya’s human touch in an AI age
Even as she experiments with AI, Yumi Matsutoya returns to the craft, memories and instincts that shaped her long career.
Employees work on the assembly line for the  Land Aircraft Carrier electric flying car at a factory of Xpeng's subsidiary Aridge in Guangzhou, China, on Nov. 6.
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Nov 30, 2025
Electric vehicle prowess helps China’s flying car sector take off
Chinese companies are building on rapid development of drones and EVs while harnessing government support for the futuristic inventions.
Signage at the Micron Technology booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai is seen on Nov. 6.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 29, 2025
Micron to invest $9.6 billion in western Japan plant, report says
Micron will build the facility within the compound of its Hiroshima plant, starting in May, with plans to launch high-bandwidth memory chips shipments around 2028.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's government plans to adopt a new cybersecurity strategy next month that calls for needed measures to address foreign threats such as election interference.
JAPAN / Politics
Nov 29, 2025
Japan to seek steps on foreign threats in new cybersecurity strategy
The new strategy will set out policy goals for the next five years for a longer-term perspective.
A 10-year-old girl watches a show on YouTube at her home in western Sydney on Oct. 30.
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Nov 29, 2025
Driven by TikTok trends, new beauty brands target children
A growing number of companies are targeting a new generation of kids who have grown up with TikTok skin care and make-up routines.
Art Week Tokyo featured a live performance of Keiichiro Shibuya’s “Android Opera Mirror — Deconstruction and Rebirth —,” starring an advanced humanoid robot.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 28, 2025
Is human-machine collaboration the future of fine art?
At this year’s Art Week Tokyo, AI emerged as a major and incredibly nuanced theme among participating artists.
The Pentagon concluded that Alibaba, among others, should be added to a list of companies that aid the Chinese military.
WORLD
Nov 27, 2025
Pentagon cited Alibaba on China military aid in Oct. 7 letter
The letter was sent to Congress roughly three weeks before the U.S. and China agreed to a broad trade truce.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s fabrication plant in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Under a possible new arrangement, Taiwanese companies, including TSMC, would send new capital and workers to expand their U.S. operations and train U.S. workers.
BUSINESS
Nov 26, 2025
Trump team negotiating Taiwan deal that could train U.S. workers, sources say
Trump has previously said some skilled foreign workers may be necessary to train Americans in state-of-the-art factories.
SoftBank Group said it is issuing a yen-denominated bond at an annual coupon of 3.98%.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 26, 2025
SoftBank ¥500 billion bond coupon highest in more than a decade
The rate on the unsecured seven-year note was set near the upper end of the previously announced range of between 3.5% and 4.1%, according to a term sheet from the company.

Longform

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.
What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival