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Every smartphone has an expiration date. There comes that day when software updates stop arriving and you start missing out on new apps and security protections. With most phones, this happened after just three years.But things are finally starting to change. The new number is seven.I first noticed this change when I reviewed Google's $700 Pixel 8 smartphone in October. Google told me that it was committed to providing software updates for the phone for seven years, compared to the previous three years for the Pixels, because it was the right thing to do.I was skeptical that this could become a trend. But this year Samsung, the most profitable Android phone maker, has set a similar software timeline for its $800 Galaxy S24 smartphone. Then Google said it would do the same for its...

With Israeli troops returning to clear Hamas for the second or third time from parts of northern Gaza, and also fighting further south in Rafah, the Israeli government has found itself facing more vocal discontent from a important constituency: its own military leaders.Current and former senior military officials have begun to argue more openly that because the government has failed to present a plan for what follows the fighting in Gaza, Israeli troops are forced – in the eighth month of the war – to fight again for areas of the territory where Hamas fighters have reappeared.Two Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, said some generals and members of the war cabinet are particularly frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ...

Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation.It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease.On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, the tech giant's core AI lab, and Isomorphic Labs, a sister company, unveiled a more powerful version of AlphaFold, an AI technology that helps scientists understand the behavior of the microscopic mechanisms that drive cells on the planet. Human Body.An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had plagued scientists for more than 50 years. It was called “the protein folding problem”.Proteins are the microscopic molecules that guide the behavior of all living things. These molecules begin as strings of chemical compounds befo...

The 12-page report was aimed at saving football's governing body, FIFA, in its moment of existential crisis.Filled with reform proposals and written by more than a dozen insiders in December 2015, the report was FIFA's best chance to demonstrate to business partners, U.S. investigators and billions of fans that it can be trusted again after one of the largest corruption scandals in sports history.Through bullet points and numbered sections, the report championed lofty ideas such as responsibility and humility. It also proposed concrete and, for FIFA, revolutionary changes: transparency in how key decisions were reached; term limits for top leaders and new limits on presidential power; and the abolition of well-funded committees, widely seen as a system of institutional corruptio...

Darren Criss, who parlayed his starring role on “Glee” into a multifaceted career in television, theater and music, will return to Broadway this fall in a new musical that is nominally about robots but also about life, love and loss.The show, "Maybe Happy Ending," is a Broadway rarity: a completely original musical, not adapted from a pre-existing story or song catalog. Criss will star alongside Helen J Shen and two other actors in the musical, which is set in Seoul at the end of the 21st century and is about two old-fashioned helper robots who meet in a robot retirement home and form a relationship while dealing with own obsolescence.The musical, by Will Aronson and Hue Park, had an initial Korean-language production in Seoul in 2016 and an English-language production in Atlanta, at the ...

With Israeli troops returning to clear Hamas for the second or third time from parts of northern Gaza, and also fighting further south in Rafah, the Israeli government has found itself facing more vocal discontent from a important constituency: its own military leaders.Current and former senior military officials have begun to argue more openly that because the government has failed to present a plan for what follows the fighting in Gaza, Israeli troops are forced – in the eighth month of the war – to fight again for areas of the territory where Hamas fighters have reappeared.Two Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, said some generals and members of the war cabinet are particularly frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ...

Geriatrics is a field of investigation. To solve medical puzzles, doctors must become detectives, identifying the effects of overlapping causes that include chronic conditions, acute injuries, social factors, and the normal aging process. It is a challenge that tests the patience of many doctors; the number of board-certified geriatricians in the United States, now just over 7,000, has been decreasing since 2017.By masquerading as a diagnosis, the term "growth failure" shortens the investigative process, stopping the investigation before doctors can determine the true cause, said Dr. Clara Tsui, a geriatrician at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last month, she saw the label in the medical records of an 82-year-old man with Alzheimer's who had fallen and hit ...

Some $300 billion in Russian assets, frozen in the West after the invasion of Ukraine, are racking up profits and interest earnings by the day. Now, Europe and the United States are considering how to use these gains to help the Ukrainian military as it wages a grueling battle against Russian forces.For months, there was debate about whether it was legal or even wise to confiscate the frozen assets altogether. While the United States and Britain favor the confiscations, significant objections have come from countries such as France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan and Saudi Arabia, as well as officials such as Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank.They argue that confiscation would set a bad precedent, a violation of sovereignty, and could lead to legal challenges, financ...

While Apple and Google turn their voice assistants into chatbots, OpenAI is turning its chatbot into a voice assistant.The San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up on Monday unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos.The company said the new app, based on an artificial intelligence system called GPT-4o, handles audio, images and video significantly faster than previous versions of the technology. The app will be available starting Monday, free of charge, for both smartphones and desktop computers.“We are looking at the future of interaction between us and machines,” said Mira Murati, the company's chief technology officer.The new app is part of a larger effort to combine conversational chatbots like ChatGPT wit...

The United Nations said one staff member was killed Monday when one of its convoys came under fire in Rafah. It is the first time an international UN staff member has been killed in Gaza since the conflict began last October.The convoy, which the UN said was clearly marked with the organisation's emblem, was headed to Gaza's European Hospital in Khan Younis to assess the aid and security situation when it came under fire, according to Farhan Haq, United Nations spokesperson. .Another staff member was injured in the attack, the United Nations said.The nationality of the killed worker, a man, was not immediately disclosed. Jordan's Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement that the injured staff member, a woman, was Jordanian and said the incident was "the result of the expans...