Qualcomm and Google have joined forces to extend software updates on Android devices. With Google's assistance, the chipmaker has committed to providing extended vendor support to any OEM building on its most powerful chips, pushing the theoretical lifespan of Android devices to eight years. There are plenty of caveats, but this move could make your next phone more useful for longer.

The extended support window only applies to Android devices with the latest Qualcomm chipsets. To start, the eight-year support timeline will be extended to devices running the new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform, which has powered devices like the OnePlus 13 and Galaxy S25. Later this year, the same policy will be applied to the company's new Snapdragon 8 and Snapdragon 7-series chips, and you can expect the same deal for at least the next five generations of Qualcomm silicon.

"Through this collaboration, OEMs can more seamlessly update the software and security on their devices, ensuring a more secure and long-lasting Android experience for our users," said Google's Android Platform manager Seang Chau.

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That comforting hot cup of tea—or refreshing glass of iced tea on a hot summer day—could help reduce the amount of toxic metals in drinking water, according to a new paper published in the journal ACS Food & Science Technology.

“We’re not suggesting that everyone starts using tea leaves as a water filter,” said co-author Vinayak Dravid, who studies sorbent materials at Northwestern University. “Our goal was to measure tea’s ability to adsorb heavy metals. By quantifying this effect, our work highlights the unrecognized potential for tea consumption to passively contribute to reduced heavy metal exposure in populations worldwide.”

Some 2 billion people drink tea on a daily basis worldwide, and numerous studies have suggested various health benefits from regular tea consumption. Most nutrition studies focus on things like polyphenols, caffeine, or other chemicals released during brewing, but such research overlooks a unique aspect of tea: unlike most food and drink, tea leaves are not directly consumed, and the brewing process allows tea leaves to adsorb chemicals as well as release them—most notably heavy metal toxins like lead, arsenic, or cadmium. (Adsorption is when a substance adheres to the surface of something; absorption is when a material takes in a substance.)

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One of the big advantages of electric vehicles is their greater freedom when it comes to packaging. Batteries go where it makes the most sense in terms of stability and safety. Electric motors are compact and don't need much cooling compared to a combustion engine, and there's no exhaust to worry about.

Putting the motors close to the wheels makes sense—in the wheel itself if possible—and it seems that a startup called Donut Labs may have solved some of the problems hub-mounted motors have faced in the past.

You can see where the name came from—the motors look like metal donuts. That originally had me thinking they used axial flux technology, as some hybrid supercars do, but I was mistaken. These are radial flux motors, just ones that make a lot of torque considering their size and mass.

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My preferred methods of organizing my schedule could be considered dated, so when I got a chance to try out a gadget meant to streamline my various digital calendars, I took it.

While I do use digital calendars and to-do lists, my go-to method for organizing my day’s tasks, goals, and upcoming events is pen and paper. I use paper calendars in agendas for a visual layout of events, including those as far away as next month. They give me a sense of control, as I'm able to highlight, circle, draw arrows, underline, erase, and so on. I also write more to-do lists than might be considered efficient (as evidenced by “make to-do list” being a frequent line on my to-do lists).

But there are many benefits to using tech for staying organized, too. With digital options, I can easily check my availability on the go with my phone and get alerts to remind me of events.

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Chegg is suing Google parent Alphabet over claims the search engine’s artificial intelligence summary tool has hit its revenues, leading the US-listed educational technology group to weigh up a sale of the business.

California-based Chegg, which provides study tools for students, filed the complaint on Monday claiming that Google AI Overviews, which presents users with summary answers to their queries, serves to keep users on Google’s own site.

Chief executive Nathan Schultz said the search giant’s AI search changes had “unjustly retained traffic that has historically come to Chegg, impacting our acquisitions, revenue and employees.”

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COVID-19 vaccines cut the risk of long COVID by between 57–73 percent in kids and teens, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open. And there's more good news: A second study published today in the journal offered more data that the now-annual shots are not linked to sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death in young athletes—a claim that gained traction on social media and among anti-vaccine groups during the acute phase of the pandemic.

Together, the studies bolster current recommendations that children and teens should stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines, which are estimated to have prevented more than 3 million deaths and more than 18 million hospitalizations in the first two years of their use.  So far, the recommendations for kids have largely gone unheeded; only 14 percent of children ages 5 to 17 are up to date on their 2024–2025 COVID shot. Surveys suggest that parents largely think the vaccines are unnecessary, given that most children only have mild COVID infections.

Still, not all infections are mild, and even mild cases can lead to long COVID, according to the authors of the first study. An estimated 1 percent to 3 percent of children infected with SARS-CoV-2 will develop long COVID, defined as having symptoms that continue or develop four or more weeks after the initial phase of infection. With tens of millions of kids getting infected with the pandemic virus, a large number of them are at risk of developing the condition.

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The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday’s heist, likely by North Korea, that drained $1.5 billion from Dubai-based exchange Bybit, making the theft by far the biggest ever in digital asset history.

Bybit officials disclosed the theft of more than 400,000 ethereum and staked ethereum coins just hours after it occurred. The notification said the digital loot had been stored in a “Multisig Cold Wallet” when, somehow, it was transferred to one of the exchange’s hot wallets. From there, the cryptocurrency was transferred out of Bybit altogether and into wallets controlled by the unknown attackers.

This wallet is too hot, this one is too cold

Researchers for blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, among others, said over the weekend that the techniques and flow of the subsequent laundering of the funds bear the signature of threat actors working on behalf of North Korea. The revelation comes as little surprise since the isolated nation has long maintained a thriving cryptocurrency theft racket, in large part to pay for its weapons of mass destruction program.

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On Monday, Anthropic announced Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a new AI language model with a simulated reasoning (SR) capability called "extended thinking," allowing the system to work through problems step by step. The company also revealed Claude Code, a command line AI agent for developers currently available as a limited research preview.

Anthropic calls Claude 3.7 the first "hybrid reasoning model" on the market, giving users the option to choose between quick responses or extended, visible chain-of-thought processing similar to OpenAI's o1 and o3 series models, Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, and DeepSeek's R1. When using Claude 3.7's API, developers can specify exactly how many tokens the model should use for thinking, up to its 128,000 token output limit.

The new model is available across all Claude subscription plans, and the extended thinking mode feature is available on all plans except the free tier. API pricing remains unchanged at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, with thinking tokens included in the output pricing since they are part of the context considered by the model.

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Nothing, the smartphone venture from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, is on its third generation of Android smartphones. The Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro will be officially announced on March 4, but there won't be much left to reveal. Not only has Nothing teased the phones a few times, there's also a new video highlighting the Nothing Phone 3a Pro's design. In it, Nothing's design team speaks at length about how they tried to incorporate the chunky camera module, but what they came up with is going to be divisive.

As we approach 20 years since the iPhone made touchscreen smartphones the default, the form factor is very fleshed out. Some of today's most popular smartphones have almost reached the point of anti-design—flat, unremarkable bodies that are intended to be covered up with a case. There's something to be said for that when most people slap a sheet of plastic on their phone and only remove it once in a blue moon. Nothing, however, designs phones with transparent panels and glowing "Glyphs" that are intended to be seen. In the case of the 3a Pro, there's also a camera module so big it's sure to stand out.

People generally want big screens and big batteries that don't make phones too thick or heavy. Some components have shrunk or been dropped entirely to free up space (a moment of silence for the dearly departed headphone jack). Camera modules, however, can't shrink infinitely. Smaller lenses and sensors have an impact on image quality, so expensive phones often have gargantuan camera arrays that can make phones top-heavy. For example, look at the Google Pixel 9 series, which features a camera bump that towers above the rest of the back.

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The first season of Andor, the Star Wars prequel series to Rogue One and A New Hope, earned critical raves for its gritty aesthetic and multilayered narrative rife with political intrigue. While ratings were a bit sluggish, they were good enough to win the series a second season, and Disney+ just dropped the first action-packed teaser trailer.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

As previously reported, the story begins five years before the events of Rogue One, with the Empire's destruction of Cassian Andor's (Diego Luna) homeworld and follows his transformation from a "revolution-averse" cynic to a major player in the nascent rebellion who is willing to sacrifice himself to save the galaxy. S1 left off with Cassian returning to Ferrix for the funeral of his adoptive mother, Maarva (Fiona Shaw), rescuing a friend from prison, and dodging an assassination attempt. A post-credits scene showed prisoners assembling the firing dish of the now-under-construction Death Star.

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A federal judge today blocked DOGE from accessing personal data held by the US Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Today's ruling follows one on Friday in a different court that blocked DOGE's access to Department of Treasury information.

The American Federation of Teachers and other "plaintiffs have shown that Education and OPM likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent," said the order issued today by US District Judge Deborah Boardman in the District of Maryland.

"This continuing, unauthorized disclosure of the plaintiffs' sensitive personal information to DOGE affiliates is irreparable harm that money damages cannot rectify," she wrote.

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Natural-language search engine Perplexity will launch a web browser, joining a competitive and crowded space that has for years been dominated by Google.

The browser will be called Comet, but we know nothing at all about its features or intended positioning within the browser market at this stage. Comet was announced in an X post with a flashy animation but no details.

Perplexity followed up the X post with a link and an invitation to sign up for beta access to the browser. Those who follow the link will find a barebones website (again with no details) and a simple form for entering an email address.

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Acura is gearing up to build its first entirely in-house battery-electric vehicles, but it has gotten a head start with the ZDX SUV. Built in collaboration with General Motors, the ZDX is a comfortable and competent luxury EV. More than that, it's a shining example of what badge engineering looks like in the digital age.

Automakers have long collaborated with each other. Sometimes that means working together on a powertrain or vehicle platform for use in quite different products. Sometimes, it's a little less involved—the Dodge Hornet differs very little from the Alfa Romeo Tonale, for example.

In the case of the Acura ZDX, the vehicle platform and the battery-electric powertrain are all thoroughly GM, what used to be called Ultium, until the American automaker retired that branding. It is, in essence, Acura's take on the Cadillac Lyriq and is similar, if not identical, in terms of power output and pricing.

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Later this week, Amazon is closing a small loophole that allowed purchasers of Kindle books to download those files to a computer and transfer them via USB. Originally intended to extend e-book access to owners of very old Kindles without Wi-Fi connectivity, the feature has also made it easier for people to download and store copies of the e-books they've bought, reducing the risk that Amazon might make changes to their text or remove them from the Kindle store entirely.

The "Download & transfer via USB" option on Amazon's site is going away this Wednesday, February 26. People who want to download their libraries to their PC easily should do so within the next two days. This change only affects the ability to download these files directly to a computer from Amazon's website—if you've downloaded the books beforehand, you'll still be able to load them on your Kindles via USB, and you'll still be able to use third-party software as well as the Send to Kindle service to get EPUB files and other books loaded onto a Kindle.

Downloading files to your PC through Amazon's site is still possible, but it's going away later this week. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

For typical Kindle owners who buy their books via Amazon's store and seamlessly download them to modern or modern-ish Kindle devices over Wi-Fi, you likely won't notice any change. The effects will be noticed most by those who use third-party software like Calibre to manage a local e-book library and people who have hopped to other e-reader platforms who want to be able to download their Kindle purchases and strip them of their DRM so they can be read elsewhere.

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A username and password just won't cut it anymore. Users around the world logging into Gmail have often relied on Google SMS pings to securely access their accounts, but that's changing. Google now hopes to move beyond SMS, which has become so frequently abused that it negates any supposed security benefit. Instead of using SMS, the company will reportedly switch to using QR codes.

Currently, Google sends SMS codes for two reasons: to confirm that a new login is legitimate and to block spammers from opening Gmail accounts in bulk. You type in your credentials, and a moment later, Google texts a six-digit code for you to enter as well. It's not a terribly arduous process, and it can help protect your account, but SMS is not very secure.

SMS messages are delivered by mobile carriers without encryption, and they often go through intermediaries that can be compromised without your knowledge. Even if the line is secure, phone numbers have very little in the way of security.

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On Monday, Apple announced plans to invest more than $500 billion in the US over the next four years.

This is the "largest-ever" spending commitment that Apple has made in the US, supporting "a wide range of initiatives" focused on artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing, advanced research and development, and worker training. About 20,000 jobs will be created over those four years, Apple said, "of which the vast majority will be focused on R&D, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning."

Apple's plans include building a 250,000-square-foot server-manufacturing facility in Houston—which will open in 2026 and "play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence" and supporting AI cloud computing, Apple said. The tech giant will also "continue expanding data center capacity in North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada," Apple's blog said.

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It was only a few days ago that a certain fear-mongering website named, ahem, Ars Technica published an article about the prospect of a killer asteroid striking the planet Earth in the year 2032.

At the time, the odds of a small asteroid first discovered late last year—and designated 2024 YR4—hitting us were non-negligible. There was an estimated 3.2 percent chance that the large rock would impact the planet eight years from now.

In the days since then, the odds have fallen dramatically. Based on the latest estimate from NASA, there is now just a 0.0039 percent chance. Put another way, the odds of impact are 1 in 26,000.

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Big Tech’s growing use of data centers has created related public health costs valued at more than $5.4 billion over the past five years, in findings that highlight the growing impact of building artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Air pollution derived from the huge amounts of energy needed to run data centers has been linked to treating cancers, asthma, and other related issues, according to research from UC Riverside and Caltech.

The academics estimated that the cost of treating illnesses connected to this pollution was valued at $1.5 billion in 2023, up 20 percent from a year earlier. They found that the overall cost was $5.4 billion since 2019.

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New York's law requiring Internet service providers to offer broadband for $15 or $20 a month has spurred legislative efforts in other states to guarantee affordable service for people with low incomes. So far, legislators in Vermont, Massachusetts, and California have proposed laws inspired by the New York requirement.

Christopher Morrow, a newly elected Democratic state legislator in Vermont, introduced a bill on January 29 that is modeled on New York's law. "Affordability is a big issue in Vermont and there are many stories of children who couldn't study properly during COVID for lack of Internet," Morrow told Ars. "It exposed the digital divide. This is a small gesture to help folks out."

Despite industry attempts to block the New York law and other broadband regulations, courts have made it clear that states can impose stricter requirements on Internet service when the Federal Communications Commission isn't regulating Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. That's the situation right now after a federal appeals court blocked a Biden-era FCC order that classified ISPs as common carriers and imposed net neutrality rules.

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It's hard to believe it's been 50 years since the release of The Stepford Wives, a film based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. It might not be to everyone's taste, but its lasting cultural influence is undeniable. A psychological horror/thriller with a hint of sci-fi, the film spawned multiple made-for-TV sequels and a campy 2004 remake, as well as inspiring one of the main characters in the hit series Desperate Housewives. The term "Stepford wife" became part of our shared cultural lexicon, and Jordan Peele even cited the film as one of the key influences for his 2017 masterpiece Get Out.

(Spoilers below for the novel and both film adaptations.)

Levin's novels were a hot commodity in Hollywood at the time, especially after the success of his most famous novel, Rosemary's Baby (1967), adapted into a 1968 horror film starring Mia Farrow. (The novels A Kiss Before Dying, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, and Levin's play Deathtrap were also adapted to film.) The plot of the The Stepford Wives film follows the novel's plot fairly closely.

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