The panel of vaccine advisors hand-selected by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted on Thursday to change the federal vaccine recommendations for children, removing safe, well-established vaccine doses from current schedules and realizing Kennedy's anti-vaccine agenda to erode federal vaccine policy and sow distrust.

Specifically, the panel—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—voted to remove the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's previous recommendation for use of a measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox) MMRV combination vaccine for children under 4 years old.

The context

In June, Kennedy fired all 17 highly qualified, highly vetted members of ACIP and quickly replaced them with seven questionable members, who largely did not have subject matter expertise. Moreover, many of them have clearly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric and skepticism about pandemic responses and COVID-19 vaccines. At least two new members have been paid witnesses in trials against vaccine makers, a clear conflict of interest. Last week, Kennedy added five additional members, who raise the same anti-vaccine concerns as the first group.

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Does alcohol enhance one's foreign language fluency? Do West African lizards have a preferred pizza topping? And can painting cows with zebra stripes help repel biting flies? These and other unusual research questions were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2025 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. Yes, it's that time of year again, when the serious and the silly converge—for science.

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor "achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think." The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words.

Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of scientific merit. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public talks, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.

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As Air Force One journeyed from the US to the UK this week, it came within eight lateral miles of a Spirit Airlines flight heading up the East Coast from Fort Lauderdale to Boston. An alert air traffic controller in the New York control center reached out to the Spirit flight, telling it to execute an immediate right turn to avoid any possibility of colliding with Air Force One.

But the Spirit pilots did not respond immediately, leading the testy air traffic controller to scold them repeatedly. (You can listen to the audio archive on LiveATC.net; it begins at around the 23:15 mark.)

"Pay attention!" said the controller after his first instruction was not acknowledged. "Spirit 1300, turn 20 degrees right."

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Now that it's looking like Chrome will remain in the Google fold , the browser is undergoing a Gemini-infused rebirth. Google claims the browser will see its most significant upgrade ever in the next few weeks as AI permeates every part of the experience. For people who use AI tools, some of these additions might actually be helpful, and for everyone else, well, Firefox still exists.

The most prominent change, and one that AI subscribers may have already seen, is the addition of a Gemini button on the desktop browser. This button opens a popup where you can ask questions about—and get summaries of—content in your open tabs. Android phones already have Gemini operating at the system level to accomplish similar tasks, but Google says the iOS Gemini app will soon be built into Chrome for Apple devices.

Credit: Google

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Running a day late, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo freighter pulled alongside the International Space Station on Thursday, delivering more than 5 tons of supplies and experiments to the lab's seven-person crew.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim took control of the space station's robotic arm to capture the Cygnus spacecraft at 7:24 am EDT (11:24 UTC) on Thursday. A short time later, the robot arm positioned the spacecraft over an attachment port on the station's Unity module, and 16 bolts drove closed to create a firm mechanical connection with the ISS.

The Cygnus XL supply ship will remain at the station for up to six months, during which time astronauts will unpack the spacecraft's cargo module and refill it with trash. The Cygnus spacecraft will depart the station and head for a destructive reentry over the remote Pacific Ocean to conclude the mission.

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Days after someone revealed the news on social media, Samsung confirmed today that it is showing advertisements on some US customers’ smart fridges. Samsung said the ads showing on some Family Hub-series fridges are part of a pilot program, but we suspect that they may become more permanent additions to Samsung fridges and/or other types of screen-equipped smart home appliances.

In a statement sent to Ars Technica, Samsung confirmed that it is “conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the US market.”

Samsung currently lists nine Family Hub refrigerators in the US, which have MSRPs ranging from $1,800 to $3,500 . Family Hub fridges have 21.5- or 32-inch screens, which, until now, users have had autonomy over for displaying helpful or fun things, like photos and videos, memos, weather, timers, and a web browser. Some of those abilities require a Wi-Fi connection or a Samsung account.

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ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel's show off the air yesterday, shortly after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr urged the Disney-owned company to take action against Kimmel or face consequences at the FCC over Kimmel's comments about Charlie Kirk's killer.

Carr appeared on right-wing commentator Benny Johnson's podcast yesterday and said, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead." Carr urged Disney to suspend Kimmel and said broadcast stations that carry ABC content should refuse to carry Kimmel's show.

After Carr's comments and a statement by Nexstar that it would preempt Kimmel's show on its ABC-affiliated stations, ABC confirmed in a statement that " Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be preempted indefinitely." The decision was made by Disney CEO Robert Iger and TV division head Dana Walden, The New York Times reported . We contacted ABC today and will update this article if we get a response.

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In a major collaboration that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago, Nvidia announced today that it was buying a total of $5 billion in Intel stock, giving Intel's competitor ownership of roughly 4 percent of the company . In addition to the investment, the two companies said that they would be co-developing "multiple generations of custom data center and PC products."

"The companies will focus on seamlessly connecting NVIDIA and Intel architectures using NVIDIA NVLink," reads Nvidia's press release, "integrating the strengths of NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing with Intel’s leading CPU technologies and x86 ecosystem to deliver cutting-edge solutions for customers."

Rather than combining the two companies' technologies, the data center chips will apparently be custom x86 chips that Intel builds to Nvidia's specifications. Nvidia will "integrate [the CPUs] into its AI infrastructure platforms and offer [them] to the market."

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The face-palm-worthy prompt injections against AI assistants continue. Today’s installment hits OpenAI’s Deep Research agent. Researchers recently devised an attack that plucked confidential information out of a user’s Gmail inbox and sent it to an attacker-controlled web server, with no interaction required on the part of the victim and no sign of exfiltration.

Deep Research is a ChatGPT-integrated AI agent that OpenAI introduced earlier this year. As its name is meant to convey, Deep Research performs complex, multi-step research on the Internet by tapping into a large array of resources, including a user’s email inbox, documents, and other resources. It can also autonomously browse websites and click on links.

A user can prompt the agent to search through the past month’s emails, cross-reference them with information found on the web, and use them to compile a detailed report on a given topic. OpenAI says that it “accomplishes in tens of minutes what would take a human many hours.”

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