call_end

    • Ar chevron_right

      Canada fought measles and measles won; virus now endemic after 1998 elimination

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 10 November

    Canada has lost its measles elimination status, meaning the highly infectious virus is considered endemic once again in the country, The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced Monday.

    The determination was made by a committee of PAHO experts, who spent last week poring over disease data to assess the measles status of countries across the entire region. The fact that Canada has lost its elimination status means that the region of the Americas overall has also lost the status, which it achieved in 2016. Of the 35 countries and territories in the region—a health region designated by the World Health Organization—Canada is currently the only country where measles is considered to be spreading endemically, though other countries, namely the US and Mexico, are headed in the same direction.

    Measles is considered eliminated when a country can go 12 months without continuous local spread. Sporadic cases brought in from international travel can continue to occur, potentially causing limited outbreaks. But elimination is lost and endemicity is declared only when transmission is sustained over the course of a year.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Apple TV execs dismiss introducing an ad tier, buying Warner Bros. Discovery

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 10 November

    The heads of Apple TV have “no plans” to bring ads to the streaming service, balking, at least for now, at a strategy that has driven success for Apple’s streaming rivals.

    In its November 2025 issue, British movie magazine Screen International asked Eddy Cue, SVP of Apple Services, if there are plans to launch an ad-based subscription tier for Apple TV. Cue responded:

    Nothing at this time. … I don’t want to say no forever, but there are no plans. If we can stay aggressive with our pricing, it’s better for consumers not to get interrupted with ads.

    The comments follow reports over the years suggesting that Apple has been seeking knowledge on how to build a streaming ads business. Most recently, The Telegraph reported that Apple TV executives met with the United Kingdom’s ratings body, Barb, to discuss what tracking ads on Apple TV would look like. In 2023, Apple hired advertising exec Lauren Fry as head of video and Apple News ad sales.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      The Running Man’s final trailer amps up the high-octane action

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 10 November • 1 minute

    It’s shaping up to be an excellent season for Stephen King adaptations. In September, we got The Long Walk , an excellent (though harrowing) adaptation of King’s 1979 Richard Bachman novel. Last month, HBO debuted its new series IT: Welcome to Derry , which explores the mythology and origins of Pennywise the killer clown. And this Friday is the premiere of The Running Man , director Edgar Wright’s ( Shaun of the Dead , Baby Driver , Last Night in Soho ) take on King’s novel of the same name. So naturally Paramount has released a final trailer to lure us to the theater.

    As previously reported , the 1987 action film starring Schwarzenegger was only loosely based on King’s novel, preserving the basic concept and very little else in favor of more sci-fi gadgetry and high-octane action. It was a noisy, entertaining romp—and very late ’80s—but it lacked King’s subtler satirical tone. Wright expressed interest in adapting his own version of The Running Man in 2017, and Paramount greenlit the project four years later. Wright and co-screenwriter Michael Bacall envisioned their film as less of a remake and more of a faithful adaptation of King’s original novel. (We’ll see if that faithfulness extends to the novel’s bleak ending.)

    Per the official premise:

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      F1 in Brazil: That’s what generational talent looks like

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 10 November • 1 minute

    After a weekend off, perhaps spent trick or treating, Formula 1’s drivers, engineers, and mechanics made their yearly trip to the Interlagos track for the Brazilian Grand Prix. More formally called the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, it’s definitely one of the more old-school circuits that F1 visits—and invariably one of the more dramatic.

    For one thing, it’s anything but billiard-smooth. Better yet, there’s elevation—lots of it—and cambers, too. Unlike most F1 tracks, it runs counterclockwise, and it combines some very fast sections with several rather technical corners that can catch out even the best drivers in the world. Nestled between a couple of lakes in São Paulo, weather is also a regular factor in races here. And indeed, a severe weather warning was issued in the lead-up to this weekend’s race.

    You have to hit the ground running

    This was another sprint weekend, which means that instead of two practice sessions on Friday and another on Saturday morning, the teams get one on Friday, then go into qualifying for the Saturday sprint race. The shortened testing time tends to shake things up a bit, and we definitely saw that this weekend.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      NASA is kind of a mess: Here are the top priorities for a new administrator

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 10 November

    After a long summer and fall of uncertainty, private astronaut Jared Isaacman has been renominated to lead NASA, and there appears to be momentum behind getting him confirmed quickly as the space agency’s 15th administrator. It is possible, although far from a lock, the Senate could finalize his nomination before the end of this year.

    It cannot happen soon enough.

    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is, to put it bluntly, kind of a mess. This is not meant to disparage the many fine people who work at NASA. But years of neglect, changing priorities, mismanagement, creeping bureaucracy, meeting bloat, and other factors have taken their toll. NASA is still capable of doing great things. It still inspires. But it needs a fresh start.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Here’s how orbital dynamics wizardry helped save NASA’s next Mars mission

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 November

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida The field of astrodynamics isn’t a magical discipline, but sometimes it seems trajectory analysts can pull a solution out of a hat.

    That’s what it took to save NASA’s ESCAPADE mission from a lengthy delay, and possible cancellation, after its rocket wasn’t ready to send it toward Mars during its appointed launch window last year. ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, consists of two identical spacecraft setting off for the red planet as soon as Sunday with a launch aboard Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket.

    “ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows , which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Blue Origin will ‘move heaven and Earth’ to help NASA reach the Moon faster, CEO says

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 8 November

    Blue Origin stands ready to help NASA achieve its goals with regard to landing humans on the Moon as soon as possible, the company’s chief executive said Saturday in an interview with Ars.

    “We just want to help the US get to the Moon,” said Dave Limp, CEO of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. “If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth, pun intended, to try to get to the Moon sooner. And I think we have some good ideas.”

    Limp spoke on Saturday, about 24 hours ahead of the company’s second launch of the large New Glenn rocket. Carrying the ESCAPADE spacecraft for NASA, the mission has a launch window that opens at 2:45 pm ET (19:45 UTC) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and runs for a little more than two hours.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      James Watson, who helped unravel DNA’s double-helix, has died

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 7 November

    James Dewey Watson, who helped reveal DNA’s double-helix structure, kicked off the Human Genome Project, and became infamous for his racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive statements, has died. He was 97.

    His death was confirmed to The New York Times by his son Duncan, who said Watson died on Thursday in a hospice in East Northport, New York, on Long Island. He had previously been hospitalized with an infection. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory also confirmed his passing .

    Watson was born in Chicago in 1928 and attained scientific fame in 1953 at 25 years old for solving the molecular structure of DNA—the genetic blueprints for life—with his colleague Francis Crick at England’s Cavendish laboratory. Their discovery heavily relied on the work of chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin at King’s College in London, whose X-ray images of DNA provided critical clues to the molecule’s twisted-ladderlike architecture. One image in particular from Franklin’s lab, Photo 51, made Watson and Crick’s discovery possible. But, she was not fully credited for her contribution. The image was given to Watson and Crick without Franklin’s knowledge or consent by Maurice Wilkins, a biophysicist and colleague of Franklin.

    Read full article

    Comments

    • Ar chevron_right

      Researchers surprised that with AI, toxicity is harder to fake than intelligence

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 7 November

    The next time you encounter an unusually polite reply on social media, you might want to check twice. It could be an AI model trying (and failing) to blend in with the crowd.

    On Wednesday, researchers from the University of Zurich, University of Amsterdam, Duke University, and New York University released a study revealing that AI models remain easily distinguishable from humans in social media conversations, with overly friendly emotional tone serving as the most persistent giveaway. The research, which tested nine open-weight models across Twitter/X, Bluesky, and Reddit, found that classifiers developed by the researchers detected AI-generated replies with 70 to 80 percent accuracy.

    The study introduces what the authors call a “computational Turing test” to assess how closely AI models approximate human language. Instead of relying on subjective human judgment about whether text sounds authentic, the framework uses automated classifiers and linguistic analysis to identify specific features that distinguish machine-generated from human-authored content.

    Read full article

    Comments