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August 15, 2024
 

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TECH

Microsoft's artificial intelligence prospects just got a boost from Sam Altman's return to his CEO role at OpenAI.
COMMENTARY
Nov 23, 2023
Altman’s comeback is a strategic triumph for Microsoft
Sam Altman's termination and swift rehiring will shift the dynamics at OpenAI.
Sam Altman was reinstated as OpenAI CEO less than five days after his ouster.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 23, 2023
Altman is back at OpenAI, but questions remain over firing
One of the big issue for the organization is to what extent Altman can continue pursuing outside ventures.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaks during WSJ Tech Live Conference in Laguna Beach, California on Oct. 17.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 23, 2023
OpenAI researchers spoke of risky discovery before CEO ouster
The previously unreported letter and AI algorithm were key developments before the board's ouster of Sam Altman.
Shareholders arrive to attend Toshiba's extraordinary shareholders meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 22, 2023
Toshiba shareholders approve plan to go private next month
The decision will allow a consortium led by JIP to buy all of Toshiba's remaining shares, marking the end of its decadeslong history as a public firm.
Up until very recently, the business of packaging semiconductors — encasing chips in materials that both protect them and connect them to the electronic device they’re part of — was, at best, an afterthought for the industry.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 22, 2023
A new front is opening up in the U.S.-China conflict over chips
The process of packaging semiconductors is increasingly seen as the "secret sauce" — a path toward achieving higher performance.
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 22, 2023
OpenAI restores Sam Altman as CEO after his tumultuous ouster
In addition to Altman's return, the company agreed to partly reconstitute the board of directors that dismissed him.
A redacted online resume of a North Korean IT worker is shown in this screenshot obtained on Monday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Nov 21, 2023
North Koreans use fake names to land remote IT work for cash
Landing a job outside North Korea to secretly earn hard currency for the country demands highly-developed strategies to convince Western firms.
OpenAI said it fired chairman Sam Altman after it concluded that he was not candid with the company's board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 21, 2023
Profit, not progress, animates the tech world
Reliable sources said Altman's firing came amid difference in views about the speed at which OpenAI should push its artificial intelligence.
Steve Jobs, Apple's former chief executive, speaks at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 6, 2011. Sam Altman, the most prominent promoter of artificial intelligence, learned that it’s hard to be a visionary founder like the Apple legend.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 21, 2023
The long shadow of Steve Jobs looms over the turmoil at OpenAI
The sudden firing and bid to reinstate OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has deepened the parallels to Jobs, who was marginalized by the board of Apple in 1985.
By Monday, OpenAI's board were overseeing a company in name only, with virtually the whole staff committed to a pledge of seeing them go or quitting the firm for fired former CEO Sam Altman's project at Microsoft.
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Nov 21, 2023
AI doomsayers blamed in OpenAI's undoing
Harsh critics see a deeply troubled startup that fell victim to the pearl-clutching of an incompetent board that was divorced from reality.
Defense Minister Minoru Kihara speaks with reporters at the Defense Ministry on Monday evening after holding a teleconference with his British and Italian counterparts.
JAPAN / Politics
Nov 21, 2023
Japan joint fighter development group planned for fiscal '24
The 'control tower' will oversee the countries’ requirements for the joint development of the fighter by 2035.
An Omron X-ray scanner VT-X750 at the company’s Ayabe Factory in Kyoto
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 21, 2023
X-rays are becoming an essential health check-up in chipmaking
Omron, a Japanese provider of health care equipment and factory automation, is setting its sights on the lucrative chipmaking gear market to fuel future growth.
Sam Altman, then-CEO of OpenAI, attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO summit in San Francisco on Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2023
The AI safety debate after OpenAI CEO's ouster
It's important to align technology with human interests as AI systems are more likely to lower than raise existential risks.
People use smartphones on the street in Tokyo in January 2019.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Nov 20, 2023
The NTT Law — a guard against monopoly, or barrier to innovation?
Some say the law regulating the telecom giant stops it from competing against the likes of Google, but others say it contains vital market protections.
Eom Dong-hwan, South Korea's minister for its defense acquisition program and administration, speaks at a ceremony marking Poland's receiving of its first delivery of South Korean K2 Black Panther tanks and K9 self-propelled howitzers in Gdynia, Poland, in December 2022.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 19, 2023
South Korea’s defense ambitions can be met by tech
Decades of facing down North Korea has forced Seoul to slowly build its own arms-producing capabilities instead of relying heavily on the U.S.
An Apple Store in Shanghai in September
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Nov 19, 2023
Asian regulators turn focus to Big Tech
Across the region, there are indications that Big Tech may soon have to comply with standards that could become international benchmarks.
Sam Altman, then the chief executive of OpenAI, in Redmond, Washington, in February
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 19, 2023
The perpetual rise of Sam Altman takes an unexpected turn
The former OpenAI CEO was the face of an AI-fueled future. He was the most Silicon Valley person alive. Then, on Friday, he was fired.
Sam Altman, then CEO of OpenAI, at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco in March
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 19, 2023
OpenAI board pressed by some investors to reinstate Sam Altman
Altman is open to returning. In one scenario under consideration, members of the current OpenAI board would step down as soon as this weekend.
Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, arrives for a bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Insight Forum for all U.S. senators hosted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the U.S. Capitol in Washington in September.
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Nov 18, 2023
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's ouster followed debate with board
The CEO's firing came after disagreements with his board — in particular Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI co-founder and the company’s chief scientist.
Overflowing trash next to a vending machine in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, which is popular with tourists, in March
JAPAN / Science & Health
Nov 18, 2023
Trash cans make techie comeback in Japan as tourists flood cities
This week, the tourist-heavy Dotonbori district in Osaka installed around 20 new technologically enabled garbage cans called SmaGO.
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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