Author: KnowledgeHippo

First, digital assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant were talking. Then there were online chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard. Now, the two are merging.On Thursday, Google unveiled Gemini, a smartphone app that acts like a talking digital assistant, as well as a conversational chatbot. Responding to voice and text requests, it can answer questions, write poetry, create images, design emails, analyze personal photos, and do other things like set a timer or make a phone call.Immediately available to English speakers in more than 150 countries and territories, including the United States, Gemini replaces Bard and Google Assistant. It…

When Bologna became the first major Italian city to impose a speed limit of 30 kilometers, or 20 miles per hour, Luca Mazzoli, a local taxi driver, posted a sign in his cab warning passengers of the change.He had to, he said grumpily the other day, “explain why I’m driving so slowly.”Since the limit became enforceable in mid-January, it has taken Mr. Mazzoli longer to get from point A to point B, he argued, meaning he has taken fewer passengers and found himself stuck in traffic more often.”A city has to move,” he said.Critics of the measure say Bologna is…

The CEOs of three major pharmaceutical companies appeared before the Senate health committee on Thursday to defend how much they charge for drugs in the United States, leading them into further confrontation with lawmakers and the Biden administration over the cost of some of the drugs. the most widely used prescription drugs.The three executives testifying — Johnson & Johnson’s Joaquin Duato, Merck’s Robert M. Davis and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Christopher Boerner — are expected to clash with the health committee’s chairman, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who has reins in drugs. Times is a characteristic speech for the…

So you want to go to the Super Bowl this weekend. Even for non-football fans, this year’s spectacle of professional sports and state-of-the-art entertainment — in Las Vegas, no less — could be hard to resist.Some of the best players of their generation, including Nick Bosa, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, will take the field when the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs meet on Sunday. Off the field, the city will be filled with celebrities including Usher (the halftime champ), Luke Combs, Adele and the Wu-Tang Clan — and those are just the weekend’s scheduled performers. So many…

Pakistanis have called it a “choice” – not an election. Human rights observers have condemned it as neither free nor fair.As voters headed to the polls on Thursday, the influence of Pakistan’s powerful military and the turbulent state of its politics were on full display. Few doubted which party would come out on top, a reflection of the generals’ eventual predominance in Pakistan’s troubled democracy.But the military is facing new challenges to its authority from a disaffected public, making this a particularly difficult time in the nation’s history.The tension was underscored on Thursday as Pakistan’s interior ministry announced it had…

The former president of Seton Hall University in New Jersey sued the school Monday, accusing its former president of trying to intimidate him and sexually harassing his wife.In the lawsuit, the former president, Joseph R. Nyre, accused the university’s former Board of Regents chairman, Kevin H. Marino, of a campaign of harassment. The lawsuit said the university’s board of trustees responded to his complaints with “gas lighting” and retaliation that ultimately led to his employment being “disgustingly terminated.”As a result, Mr. Nyre said, he resigned last summer after four years on the job.He was joined in the lawsuit by his…

The United States is poised to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade as the rising costs of an aging population and higher interest rates continue to weigh on the nation’s fiscal outlook, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.But the report did offer some subtle relief: Newly enacted legislation to curb federal spending and a faster-than-expected U.S. economy make the fiscal picture slightly less bleak. Annual deficits over the next decade are 7 percent smaller than the $20.3 trillion the budget office projected last year.This decline reflects several conflicting forces. A deal President Biden…

About 17 years ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at a San Francisco convention center and said he was introducing three products: an iPod, a phone, and an Internet browser.”These are not three separate devices,” he said. “This is a device and we call it the iPhone.”At $500, the first iPhone was relatively expensive, but I was willing to ditch my mediocre Motorola and sell it out. There were flaws — including sluggish cell speeds. But the iPhone kept its promises.In the last week, I had a very different experience with a new first-generation product from Apple: the Vision Pro,…

Tesla sales surged in the final three months of 2023 as the automaker cut prices and customers rushed to take advantage of tax breaks on electric vehicles — provisions that will be harder to come by in 2024.The company said Tuesday it sold 484,500 cars in the fourth quarter, up from 435,000 in the third quarter and 405,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022. For the full year, Tesla sold 1.8 million vehicles. The earnings put Tesla on track to sell more than two million cars by 2024, potentially surpassing established automakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Renault.A rebound in sales…

A patient goes to the hospital for a routine procedure to treat an enlarged prostate. And, unexpectedly, a test done at the hospital—perhaps a blood test or an X-ray or an examination of the urethra and bladder—finds a cancer.Apparently, something like this happened to King Charles III. When the British monarch was treated for an enlarged prostate in January, doctors found a cancer that the palace said was not prostate cancer. Charles started treatment on Monday. The palace did not reveal what had led to the king’s diagnosis.While some prostate specialists like Dr. Peter Albertsen at the University of Connecticut…