Sustainable development

British Columbia unveils major plan to power economic growth with clean energy

The Government of British Columbia has announced a sweeping economic and energy plan aimed at driving industrial growth through clean electricity. Centred on the North Coast Transmission Line, the plan aims to boost the province’s economy while ensuring First Nations share in the benefits.

Premier David Eby said the new legislation would make British Columbia the ‘economic engine’ of Canada, powered by clean energy and local partnerships. Set to begin in 2026, the NCTL will provide clean, affordable power to major industries such as mining, natural gas, and manufacturing.

Once operational, it is projected to create nearly 9,700 direct jobs, contribute around $10 billion to GDP, and cut millions of tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

To manage rising energy demand, the government will limit crypto mining and prioritise projects with strong economic and environmental benefits. A power allocation process for data centres, AI, and hydrogen projects will start in 2026 to support responsible growth.

The plan also enables greater First Nations participation through potential equity ownership in new energy infrastructure. Industry leaders say the project could attract billions in investment and strengthen British Columbia’s position in clean energy and critical minerals.

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Google Cloud and NVIDIA join forces to accelerate enterprise AI and industrial digitalisation

NVIDIA and Google Cloud are expanding their collaboration to bring advanced AI computing to a wider range of enterprise workloads.

The new Google Cloud G4 virtual machines, powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, are now generally available, combining high-performance computing with scalability for AI, design, and industrial applications.

An announcement that also makes NVIDIA Omniverse and Isaac Sim available on the Google Cloud Marketplace, offering enterprises new tools for digital twin development, robotics simulation, and AI-driven industrial operations.

These integrations enable customers to build realistic virtual environments, train intelligent systems, and streamline design processes.

Powered by the Blackwell architecture, the RTX PRO 6000 GPUs support next-generation AI inference and advanced graphics capabilities. Enterprises can use them to accelerate complex workloads ranging from generative and agentic AI to high-fidelity simulations.

The partnership strengthens Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure and cements NVIDIA’s role as the leading provider of end-to-end computing for enterprise transformation.

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Samsung unveils AI-powered redesign of its corporate Newsroom

The South Korean firm, Samsung Electronics, has redesigned its official Newsroom, transforming it into a multimedia platform built around visuals, video and AI-driven features.

A revamped site that aligns with the growing dominance of visual communication, aiming to make corporate storytelling more intuitive, engaging and accessible.

The updated homepage features an expanded horizontal carousel showcasing videos, graphics and feature stories with hover-based summaries for quick insight. Users can browse by theme, play videos directly and enjoy a seamless experience across all Samsung devices.

A redesign by Samsung that also introduces an integrated media hub with improved press tools, content filters and high-resolution downloads. Journalists can now save full articles, videos and images in one click, simplifying access to media materials.

AI integration adds smart summaries and upgraded search capabilities, including tag- and image-based discovery. These tools enhance relevance and retrieval speed, while flexible sorting and keyword highlighting refine user experience.

As Samsung celebrates a decade since launching its Newsroom, such a transformation marks a step toward a more dynamic, interactive communication model designed for both consumers and media professionals in the AI era.

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China’s Unitree reveals next-generation humanoid ahead of major IPO

Unitree Robotics has unveiled its most lifelike humanoid robot to date, marking a bold step forward in the country’s rapidly advancing robotics industry.

The new H2 humanoid model, showcased in a short social media video, demonstrated remarkable agility and expressiveness, performing intricate dance moves with striking humanlike grace.

The 180cm-tall, 70kg robot features a silver face with defined eyes, lips and nose, alongside the tagline ‘Destiny Awakening – born to serve everyone safely and friendly’.

A model that represents the company’s growing ambition as it prepares for a mainland listing valued at around US$7 billion.

Unitree’s progress underscores the growing strength of China in humanoid robotics, a field increasingly dominated by domestic innovation and manufacturing capabilities.

As global competition intensifies, the company aims to position itself at the forefront of human-robot interaction and industrial automation.

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Swiss scientists grow mini-brains to power future computers

In a Swiss laboratory, researchers are using clusters of human brain cells to power experimental computers. The start-up FinalSpark is leading this emerging field of biocomputing, also known as wetware, which uses living neurons instead of silicon chips.

Co-founder Fred Jordan said biological neurons are vastly more energy-efficient than artificial ones and could one day replace traditional processors. He believes brain-based computing may eventually help reduce the massive power demands created by AI systems.

Each ‘bioprocessor’ is made from human skin cells reprogrammed into neurons and grouped into small organoids. Electrodes connect to these clumps, allowing the Swiss scientists to send signals and measure their responses in a digital form similar to binary code.

Scientists emphasise that the technology is still in its infancy and not capable of consciousness. Each organoid contains about ten thousand neurons, compared to a human brain’s hundred billion. FinalSpark collaborates with ethicists to ensure the research remains responsible and transparent.

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AWS outage shows the cost of cloud concentration

A single fault can bring down the modern web. During the outage on Monday, 20 October 2025, millions woke to broken apps, games, banking, and tools after database errors at Amazon Web Services rippled outward. When a shared backbone stumbles, the blast radius engulfs everything from chat to commerce.

The outage underscored cloud concentration risk. Roblox, Fortnite, Pokémon Go, Snapchat, and workplace staples like Slack and Monday.com stumbled together because many depend on the same region and data layer. Failover, throttling, and retries help, but simultaneous strain can swamp safeguards.

On Friday, 19 July 2024, a faulty CrowdStrike update crashed Windows machines worldwide, triggering blue screens that grounded flights, delayed surgeries, and froze point-of-sale systems. The fix was simple; recovery wasn’t. Friday patches gained a new cautionary tale.

Earlier shocks foreshadowed today’s scale. In 1997, a Network Solutions glitch briefly hobbled .com and .net. In 2018, malware in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna knocked services offline, sending a community of 100,000 back to paper. Each incident showed how mundane errors cascade into civic life.

Resilience now means multi-region designs, cross-cloud failovers, tested runbooks, rate-limit backstops, and graceful read-only modes. Add regulatory stress tests, clear incident comms, and sector drills with hospitals, airlines, and banks. The internet will keep breaking; our job is to make it bend.

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Wikipedia faces traffic decline as AI and social video reshape online search

Wikipedia’s human traffic has fallen by 8% over the past year, a decline the Wikimedia Foundation attributes to changing information habits driven by AI and social media.

The foundation’s Marshall Miller explained that updates to Wikipedia’s bot detection system revealed much of the earlier traffic surge came from undetected bots, revealing a sharper drop in genuine visits.

Miller pointed to the growing use of AI-generated search summaries and the rise of short-form video as key factors. Search engines now provide direct answers using generative AI instead of linking to external sources, while younger users increasingly turn to social video platforms rather than traditional websites.

Although Wikipedia’s knowledge continues to feed AI models, fewer people are reaching the original source.

The foundation warns that the shift poses risks to Wikipedia’s volunteer-driven ecosystem and donation-based model. With fewer visitors, fewer contributors may update content and fewer donors may provide financial support.

Miller urged AI companies and search engines to direct users back to the encyclopedia, ensuring both transparency and sustainability.

Wikipedia is responding by developing a new framework for content attribution and expanding efforts to reach new readers. The foundation also encourages users to support human-curated knowledge by citing original sources and recognising the people behind the information that powers AI systems.

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Australian students get 12 months of Google Gemini Pro at no cost

Google has launched a free twelve-month Gemini Pro plan for students in Australia aged eighteen and over, aiming to make AI-powered learning more accessible.

The offer includes the company’s most advanced tools and features designed to enhance study efficiency and critical thinking.

A key addition is Guided Learning mode, which acts as a personal AI coach. Instead of quick answers, it walks students through complex subjects step by step, encouraging a deeper understanding of concepts.

Gemini now also integrates diagrams, images and YouTube videos into responses to make lessons more visual and engaging.

Students can create flashcards, quizzes and study guides automatically from their own materials, helping them prepare for exams more effectively. The Gemini Pro account upgrade provides access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Deep Research, NotebookLM, Veo 3 for short video creation, and Jules, an AI coding assistant.

With two terabytes of storage and the full suite of Google’s AI tools, the Gemini app aims to support Australian students in their studies and skill development throughout the academic year.

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Meta champions open hardware to power the next generation of AI data centres

The US tech giant, Meta, believes open hardware will define the future of AI data centre infrastructure. Speaking at the Open Compute Project Global Summit, the company outlined a series of innovations designed to make large-scale AI systems more efficient, sustainable, and collaborative.

Meta, one of the OCP’s founding members, said open source hardware remains essential to scaling the physical infrastructure required for the next generation of AI.

During the summit, Meta joined industry peers in supporting OCP’s Open Data Center Initiative, which calls for shared standards in power, cooling, and mechanical design.

The company also unveiled a new generation of network fabrics for AI training clusters, integrating NVIDIA’s Spectrum Ethernet to enable greater flexibility and performance.

As part of the effort, Meta became an initiating member of Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking, aiming to strengthen connectivity across increasingly complex AI systems.

Meta further introduced the Open Rack Wide (ORW) form factor, an open source data rack standard optimised for the power and cooling demands of modern AI.

Built on ORW specifications, AMD’s new Helios rack was presented as the most advanced AI rack yet, embodying the shift toward interoperable and standardised infrastructure.

Meta also showcased new AI hardware platforms built to improve performance and serviceability for large-scale generative AI workloads.

Sustainability remains central to Meta’s strategy. The company presented ‘Design for Sustainability’, a framework to reduce hardware emissions through modularity, reuse, and extended lifecycles.

It also shared how its Llama AI models help track emissions across millions of components. Meta said it will continue to

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NVIDIA and TSMC celebrate first US-made Blackwell AI chip

A collaboration between NVIDIA and TSMC has marked a historic milestone with the first NVIDIA Blackwell wafer produced on US soil.

The event, held at TSMC’s facility in Phoenix, symbolised the start of volume production for the Blackwell architecture and a major step toward domestic AI chip manufacturing.

NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang described it as a moment that brings advanced technology and industrial strength back to the US.

A partnership that highlights how the companies aim to strengthen the US’s semiconductor supply chain by producing the world’s most advanced chips domestically.

TSMC Arizona will manufacture next-generation two-, three- and four-nanometre technologies, crucial for AI, telecommunications, and high-performance computing. The process transforms raw wafers through layering, etching, and patterning into the high-speed processors driving the AI revolution.

TSMC executives praised the achievement as the result of decades of partnership with NVIDIA, built on innovation and technical excellence.

Both companies believe that local chip production will help meet the rising global demand for AI infrastructure while securing the US’s strategic position in advanced technology manufacturing.

NVIDIA also plans to use its AI, robotics, and digital twin platforms to design and manage future American facilities, deepening its commitment to domestic production.

The companies say their shared investment signals a long-term vision of sustainable innovation, industrial resilience, and technological leadership for the AI era.

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