Times

Growing up in Orange County in the late 1970s, KL DeHart often wandered the Westminster Mall with her mother, checking out the latest fashions and seeing what movies were playing.As a teenager, she spent many weekends there with friends playing pinball and skeeball at the arcade and shopping for trendy Chemin De Fer jeans.Now, the mall is pocked with empty storefronts. At the remaining businesses, employees eagerly jump to help the few customers passing through.What may rise in its place, if developers and city officials…

The creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip faced a backlash of cancellations Saturday while defending remarks describing people who are Black as members of “a hate group” from which white people should “get away.”Various media publishers across the U.S. denounced the comments by “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams as racist, hateful and discriminatory while saying they would no longer provide a platform for his work.Andrews McMeel Syndication, which distributes “Dilbert,” did not immediately respond Saturday to requests for…

The Times has decided to cease publication of “Dilbert.” Cartoonist Scott Adams made racist comments in a YouTube livestream Feb. 22, offensive remarks that The Times rejects. Further, in the last nine months The Times has on four occasions printed a rerun of the comic when the new daily strip did not meet our standards. It will be discontinued effective Monday in most editions. But because Sunday Comics are printed in advance, “Dilbert” will last appear in the March 12 paper. A replacement title will premiere soon. The…

Screenshot: YouTubeMan falls in love with an OS system on his phone. This is the entire premise of the film. When Theodore downloads the AI-generated voice on his phone, Samantha, which is advertised as “not just an operating system,” but “a consciousness,” he doesn’t expect to fall in love with his device.Yet that’s exactly what happens, leaving him with the conundrum of what to do now that AI has gotten under his skin. It warns of AI taking the place of human interaction, creating a world that doesn’t exist, and…

Credit: John Cameron/Unsplash.com Nobody likes waiting for services, whether it's a long line at the grocery store or an extra half-hour in a doctor's waiting room. Turns out wait times are not the same for everyone: Black Americans and lower income Americans wait longer. This inequity is spelled out in an article in Nature Human…

Screen time refers to the amount of time spent using digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers. Excessive screen time has been linked to a range of negative effects on children, including decreased physical activity, disrupted sleep patterns, decreased attention span and cognitive skills, and decreased social skills and emotional well-being.Researchers from Osaka University have discovered that mitigating the harmful effects of screen time on young minds could be as straightforward as encouraging…

Students frequently slept past the start of morning classes. a, Sleep periods and scheduled classes are shown in a representative student who took part in a 6-week actigraphy study. b, Sleep offsets from 174 students are sorted by their first class of the day. Each circle corresponds to an individually determined sleep offset value. Open circles show instances when students woke up after the start of their class. Black circles show instances when…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A little over a year ago, thousands of people descended on Ottawa protesting COVID-19 pandemic countermeasures as part of a "freedom convoy." They contested the science around vaccines, chanted and held signs condemning the Trudeau government. A key theme of the protest movement was anger directed…

Several 1st-generation iPhones in the past have been auctioned for a much higher price as compared to their original price, but none compared to this. The first iPhone was launched in 2007 for $599 (approx Rs 49,574).iPhone sold for Rs 52 lakh!Karen Green, a cosmetic tattoo artist, received her 8GB smartphone in 2007 as a token of appreciation for her hard work and the start of a new career. The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch screen and a 2MP camera; today’s top-tier iPhone, by comparison, has a 6.7-inch screen and a 48MP…

The recent discovery of the material offers new possibilities for utilizing polymer materials in innovative ways, particularly in the field of soft robotics, where you often need fast and powerful actuation mechanisms.Engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder have created a new, rubber-like film that can jump high into the air independently, mimicking the motion of a grasshopper, without any external assistance. Just heat it up and watch it jump!The researchers have documented their accomplishment in a paper…