Google’s employees were shocked when they learned in March that the South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung was considering replacing Google with Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine on its devices. For years, Bing had been a search engine also-ran. But it became a lot more interesting to industry insiders when it recently added new artificial intelligence technology. Google’s rea

As the most powerful rocket ever built blasted from its launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday, the liftoff rocked the earth and kicked up a billowing cloud of dust and debris, shaking homes and raining down brown grime for miles. In Port Isabel, a city about six miles northwest where at least one window shattered, residents were alarmed. “It was truly terrifying,” said Sharon Almaguer, who,

His pronouncements could hardly sound more drastic. In interviews and public appearances, Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale, has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society. “I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” he said during one online news program in late 2021. “In the end, isn’t it mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of

He has amassed millions of followers on social media, where he opines on the failures of Japanese society. He has appeared both on the catwalk at one of Japan’s biggest fashion shows and in a government video urging people to watch their finances. In a national poll, high school students said he was their top pick for prime minister. By endearing himself to young Japanese who feel oppressed by the

Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Japanese prime minister, who made it his political mission to vanquish his country’s wartime ghosts but fell short of his ultimate goal of restoring Japan as a normalized military power, was assassinated on Friday in the city of Nara, Japan. He was 67. His death, from injuries sustained in a shooting during a speech at a campaign event, was confirmed by Dr. Hidetada

Mark noticed something amiss with his toddler. His son’s penis looked swollen and was hurting him. Mark, a stay-at-home dad in San Francisco, grabbed his Android smartphone and took photos to document the problem so he could track its progression. It was a Friday night in February 2021. His wife called an advice nurse at their health care provider to schedule an emergency consultation for the next

Researchers at the Delft University of Technology with one of the three nodes in a quantum computing network, which uses mirrors, filters and lasers to guide electrons into a synthetic diamond.Credit...Marieke de Lorijn for QuTech From Santa Barbara, Calif., to Hefei, China, scientists are developing a new kind of computer that will make today’s machines look like toys. Harnessing the mysterious p

Covid-19 may cause greater loss of gray matter and tissue damage in the brain than naturally occurs in people who have not been infected with the virus, a large new study found. The study, published Monday in the journal Nature, is believed to be the first involving people who underwent brain scans both before they contracted Covid and months after. Neurological experts who were not involved in th

The sudden hit Wordle, in which once a day players get six chances to guess a five-letter word, has been acquired by The New York Times Company. The purchase, announced by The Times on Monday, reflects the growing importance of games, like crosswords and Spelling Bee, in the company’s quest to increase digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025. Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle,

TOKYO — Just four days after Naomi Osaka mounted the stairs to light the Olympic cauldron, presented as a symbol of a new, more inclusive Japan, that image was undermined on Tuesday by a backlash that followed her surprise defeat in Tokyo. Many Japanese were stunned by Ms. Osaka’s third-round loss to Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic after she had been favored to take the women’s tennis go