For a quarter-century, dating back to my time as a budding space enthusiast, I've watched with a keen eye each time people have ventured into space.

That's 162 human spaceflight missions since the beginning of 2000, ranging from Space Shuttle flights to Russian Soyuz missions, Chinese astronauts' first forays into orbit, and commercial expeditions on SpaceX's Dragon capsule. Yes, I'm also counting privately funded suborbital hops launched by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

Last week, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin captured headlines— though not purely positive —with the launch of six women, including pop star Katy Perry, to an altitude of 66 miles (106 kilometers). The capsule returned to the ground 10 minutes and 21 seconds later. It was the first all-female flight to space since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's solo mission in 1963.

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A controversial doctor providing unproven measles treatments to unvaccinated children in West Texas recently contracted the highly infectious virus himself amid the mushrooming outbreak—and he continued treating patients while visibly ill with the virus.

The doctor's infection was revealed in a video posted online by Children's Health Defense (CHD), the rabid anti-vaccine advocacy organization founded and previously run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time anti-vaccine advocate who is now the US secretary of health. Kennedy headed CHD until January, when he stepped down in anticipation of his Senate confirmation.

In the video, the doctor, Ben Edwards, can be seen with mild spots on his face. Someone asks him if he caught measles himself, and he responds, "Yeah," saying he was "pretty achy yesterday." He went on to say that he had developed the rash the day before but woke up that day feeling "pretty good." The video was posted by CHD on March 31, and the Associated Press was the first to report it.

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Is there anything more human than gathering in groups to share food and partake in a fermented beverage or two (or three, or....)? Researchers have caught wild chimpanzees on camera engaging in what appears to be similar activity: sharing fermented African breadfruit with measurable alcoholic content. According to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, the observational data is the first evidence of the sharing of alcoholic foods among nonhuman great apes in the wild.

The fruit in question is seasonal and comes from Treculia africana trees common across the home environment of the wild chimps in Cantanhez National Park in Guinea-Bissau. Once mature, the fruits drop from the tree to the ground and slowly ripen from a hard, deep green exterior to a yellow, spongier texture. Because the chimps are unhabituated, the authors deployed camera traps at three separate locations to record their feeding and sharing behavior.

They recorded ten instances of selective fruit sharing among 17 chimps, with the animals exhibiting a marked preference for riper fruit. The authors measured the alcohol content of the fruit with a handy portable breathalyzer between April and July, 2022, and found almost all of the fallen fruit (90 percent) contained some ethanol, with the ripest containing the highest levels—the equivalent of 0.61 percent ABV (alcohol by volume).

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It's possible that the White House may be looking to replace defense secretary Pete Hegseth after critics warned that a pair of controversial Signal chats risked compromising US national security.

In March, it was revealed that Hegseth accidentally texted secret bombing plans in a Signal chat that included a reporter, raising alarms about his handling of sensitive military information. And then this weekend, The New York Times revealed that he similarly shared the attack plans, just minutes after learning of them, in a personal Signal chat that included his wife and brother.

That second revelation sparked a "full-blown meltdown" at the Pentagon, The Guardian reported , apparently prompting the Trump administration to begin "the process of looking for a new secretary of defense," a US official granted anonymity told NPR Monday.

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Whisky , a gaming-focused front-end for Wine's Windows compatibility tools on macOS, is no longer receiving updates . As one of the most useful and well-regarded tools in a Mac gamer's toolkit, it could be seen as a great loss, but its developer hopes you'll move on with what he considers a better option: supporting CodeWeavers' CrossOver product .

Also, Whisky's creator is an 18-year-old college student, and he could use a break.

"I am 18, yes, and attending Northeastern University, so it's always a balancing act between my school work and dev work," Isaac Marovitz wrote to Ars. The Whisky project has "been more or less in this state for a few months, I posted the notice mostly to clarify and formally announce it," Marovitz said, having received "a lot of questions" about the project status.

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As the global artificial intelligence (AI) race presses on amid a US-China trade war, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—a $514 billion titan that manufactures most of the world's AI chips—is warning that it may not be possible to keep its customers' most advanced technology out of China's hands.

US export controls require chipmakers to monitor shipments and know their customers to restrict China's access to AI chips. But in a recently published 2024 report , TSMC confirmed that its "role in the semiconductor supply chain inherently limits its visibility and information available to it regarding the downstream use or user of final products that incorporate semiconductors manufactured by it."

Essentially, TSMC expects that it plays too big a role in the semiconductor industry to stop all the possible unintended end-uses of the semiconductors it manufactures. Similarly, it appears impossible to track all the third parties determined to skirt sanctions. And if TSMC's hands are truly tied, that ultimately means that the US can't effectively stop the latest AI tech from trickling into China.

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Microsoft is preparing to reintroduce Recall to Windows 11 . A feature limited to Copilot+ PCs —a label that just a fraction of a fraction of Windows 11 systems even qualify for—Recall has been controversial in part because it builds an extensive database of text and screenshots that records almost everything you do on your PC.

But the main problem with the initial version of Recall—the one that was delayed at the last minute after a large-scale outcry from security researchers, reporters, and users—was not just that it recorded everything you did on your PC but that it was a rushed, enabled-by-default feature with gaping security holes that made it trivial for anyone with any kind of access to your PC to see your entire Recall database.

It made no efforts to automatically exclude sensitive data like bank information or credit card numbers, offering just a few mechanisms to users to manually exclude specific apps or websites. It had been built quickly, outside of the normal extensive Windows Insider preview and testing process. And all of this was happening at the same time that the company was pledging to prioritize security over all other considerations , following several serious and highly public breaches .

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The remedy phase of Google's search antitrust trial is getting underway, and the government is seeking to force major changes. The next few weeks could reshape Google as a company and significantly alter the balance of power on the Internet, and both sides have a plan to get their way.

With opening arguments beginning today, the US Justice Department will seek to convince the court that Google should be forced to divest Chrome, unbundle Android, and make other foundational changes. But Google will attempt to paint the government's position as too extreme and rooted in past grievances. No matter what happens at this trial, Google hasn't given up hope it can turn back time.

Advantage for Justice Dept.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has a major advantage here: Google is guilty. It lost the liability phase of this trial resoundingly, with the court finding Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power." As far as the court is concerned, Google has an illegal monopoly in search services and general search advertising. The purpose of this trial is to determine what to do about it, and the DOJ has some ideas .

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Ask ChatGPT anything lately—how to poach an egg, whether you should hug a cactus—and you may be greeted with a burst of purple praise: “Good question! You’re very astute to ask that.” To some extent, ChatGPT has been a sycophant for years , but since late March, a growing cohort of Redditors, X users, and Ars readers say that GPT-4o's relentless pep has crossed the line from friendly to unbearable.

"ChatGPT is suddenly the biggest suckup I've ever met," wrote software engineer Craig Weiss in a widely shared tweet on Friday. "It literally will validate everything I say."

"EXACTLY WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING," replied a Reddit user who references Weiss's tweet, sparking yet another thread about ChatGPT being a sycophant. Recently, other Reddit users have described feeling "buttered up" and unable to take the "phony act" anymore, while some complain that ChatGPT "wants to pretend all questions are exciting and it's freaking annoying."

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