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Japan this week eliminated all regulations requiring the use of floppy disks for administrative purposes, making up for lost time 13 years after the country's manufacturers produced their last units.The floppy disk, invented in the 1970s, was once a ubiquitous part of computing. Since then, other forms of storage such as flash drives and Internet cloud storage have taken over. By the 1990s, it, along with the music cassette, was tossed into the dustbin of obsolete technology.But not in Japan. While famous for its consumer electronics giants, robots, and some of the world’s fastest broadband networks, the country has also been wedded to floppy disks and other old technologies like fax machines and cash.Japan began to abandon the 1900s storage devices, plastic-coated magnetic disks, only...

One promised to confront Iran's enemies, the other vowed to make peace with the world. One intends to double down on social restrictions, the other promises to loosen stifling rules for young people and women. One identifies as an Islamic ideologue, the other as a pragmatic reformist.The race to become Iran's next president has turned into a fierce contest in which, for the first time in more than a decade, the outcome is hard to predict. The winner will be decided in a runoff on Friday after a general election a week earlier failed to produce a candidate with the required 50 percent of the vote.The outcome could depend on how many Iranians who skipped voting in the general election decide to participate in the runoff. Voter turnout hit an all-time low of 40 percent last week, with...

It didn’t become part of vaccination programs in Africa until 2024.What if it had come faster?What if the shots had arrived9 years ago?143,000.That’s how many children’s deaths could have been averted.By Stephanie NolenStephanie Nolen interviewed more than 30 scientists, health officials and other key players in the development of the malaria vaccines to report this article.July 5, 2024Nurses in countries from Sierra Leone to Cameroon are packing a new vaccine into the coolers they tote to villages for immunization clinics: a shot to protect against malaria, one of the deadliest diseases for children.Babies and toddlers in eight countries in the region recently started to get the vaccine as part of their routine childhood shots. Seven other African countries are eagerly awaiting its arriva...

As far as the authorities in Gelsenkirchen were concerned, every precaution had been taken. Extra stewards patrolled the perimeter of the pitch at the Arena AufSchalke. Plainclothes security personnel were in the stands. And two imposing security guards stood at the edge of the tunnel leading to the changing rooms.And yet, even that wasn’t enough. As Portugal’s players trudged back to the dressing room after their defeat to Georgia last week, one fan bypassed the extra layers of security by leaping over the top of the tunnel and directly into the path of Cristiano Ronaldo.Instead of coming face to face with his hero, however, the intruder botched his landing and fell down a flight of stairs. The point, however, had been made. Ronaldo's allure is such that no matter what the stadium aut...

Sitting near a window at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston, overlooking the duck pond in the city’s Public Garden, Ray Kurzweil held up a sheet of paper showing the steady growth in computing power a dollar could buy over the past 85 years.A neon green line rose steadily across the page, like fireworks in the night sky.That diagonal line, he said, shows why humanity is just 20 years away from the Singularity, a long-hyped moment when people will merge with artificial intelligence and equip themselves with millions of times more computing power than their biological brains currently provide.“If you create something that is thousands of times — or millions of times — more powerful than the brain, we can’t predict what it will do,” he said, wearing multicolored suspenders and a Mickey Mouse wa...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Biden on Thursday that he will send a new negotiating delegation to ceasefire talks in Gaza, Netanyahu's office said, while reiterating that Israel will end the war "only after it achieves its goals."Ceasefire talks, based on proposals put forward by the Biden administration and backed by the United Nations, broke down in June.“The Prime Minister informed President Biden of his decision to send a delegation to continue negotiations for the release of the hostages and reiterated the principles to which Israel is committed, first and foremost Israel’s commitment to ending the war only after achieving all of its objectives,” the statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office read.The efforts to revive negotiations have come amid simmering ten...

Spring Fertility, a clinic in Midtown Manhattan, looks like the place where the main characters on “Broad City” would have wound up if the millennial sitcom had done an episode about egg freezing. The waiting room has books by America’s youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman and its Instagram poet laureate Rupi Kaur. The kitchen is stocked with Spindrift. A conference room also serves as a venue for “shots nights,” less raucous than they sound, where patients inject themselves with fertility drugs communally, with encouragement from staff.Spring’s medical director in New York, Catha Fischer, dressed in a loose blouse and a low ponytail, beamed as she showed me the phlebotomy stations and operating room, where patients are anesthetized so that a doctor can puncture their ovaries with a needle an...

As the rest of the world zigzags toward a four-day workweek, Greece is opting for a change.A law allowing some companies to impose a six-day workweek went into effect on Monday, a change aimed at supporting the country’s aging workforce, compensating struggling workers and safeguarding the Greek way of life.The law applies to private sector workers in certain industrial and manufacturing sectors, or those who work in a company that operates continuous shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with some exceptions. And it would only be allowed "in exceptional circumstances," such as an unexpectedly increased workload.Unions, which have long campaigned for better working conditions and rights, opposed the move. It sparked heated debate and, when the bill was passed last year, protests. Greec...

Early last year, a hacker gained access to the internal messaging systems of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and stole details about the design of the company’s artificial intelligence technologies.The hacker stole details from discussions in an online forum where employees discussed OpenAI’s latest technologies, but was unable to break into the systems where the company hosts and develops its artificial intelligence, according to two people familiar with the incident.OpenAI executives disclosed the incident to employees at an all-hands meeting at the company’s San Francisco offices in April 2023, the people said, during which they discussed sensitive company information on condition of anonymity.But executives decided not to share the news publicly because no customer or partner information...

In the working-class neighborhood of Tehran surrounding Imam Hussein Square, side streets and alleys are lined with second-hand shops and small repair shops that refurbish all manner of household appliances. But with little to do, most shopkeepers idle outside their stores.A 60-year-old man named Abbas and his son Asgar, 32, sat on two of the second-hand faux-brocade chairs they sell. When asked about their business, Abbas, who did not want his last name used for fear of attracting government attention, seemed incredulous."Just look down the street," he said. "Business is bad. There are no customers, people are economically weak now, they have no money."After years of debilitating U.S. sanctions that have generated chronic inflation, compounded by Iran’s economic mismanagement and corrupti...