Microbial DNA suggests troops suffered from paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever, among other diseases. In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte led a disastrous military campaign into Moscow. The death toll was devastating: Out of some 615,000 men, only about 110,000 survivors returned. (Napoleon abandoned his army in early December to return…
A South Korean rocket startup will soon make its first attempt to reach low-Earth orbit. Welcome to Edition 8.16 of the Rocket Report! The 10th anniversary of SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 rocket landing is coming up at the end of this year. We’re still waiting for a second company…
The acquired firm was working on a tool to control macOS directly with AI. OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Incorporated (SAI), perhaps best known for the core team that produced what became Shortcuts on Apple platforms. More recently, the team has been working on Sky, a context-aware AI interface…
Fossil beds in New Mexico show diverse species present in the late Cretaceous. The end of the dinosaurs was clearly linked to an asteroid impact that brought the Cretaceous period to a close. But the details of their end have remained a matter of debate since the impact crater…
The NTP produced controversial studies on cellphone radiation and fluoride. The director of a federal health institute that has arguably produced two of the most controversial government studies in recent years has accepted a new federal role to advance the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Meanwhile,…
“Mico” literally tries to put a face on Microsoft’s chatbot-turned-assistant. Microsoft said earlier this month that it wanted to add better voice controls to Copilot, Windows 11’s built-in chatbot-slash-virtual assistant. As described, this new version of Copilot sounds an awful lot like another stab at Cortana, the voice assistant…
Europeans weren’t the first people to collect fossils in Australia. Australia’s First Peoples may or may not have hunted the continent’s megafauna to extinction, but they definitely collected fossils. A team of archaeologists examined the fossilized leg bone of an extinct kangaroo and realized that instead of evidence of…
Once rare $14K knife now sells for $7K, some common guns jump from $10 to over $100. From the outside, Counter-Strike 2 looks a lot like a game that’s primarily about shooting people. For millions of players, though, the game is more about collecting and/or buying rare in-game loot…
Three days with a car revealed its character in more ways than one. Ferrari provided flights from Washington, DC, to Austin, Texas, and accommodation so Ars could attend the Lone Star Le Mans. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. The first time I drove this generation of mid-engined…
New phone design compromises on camera and battery to achieve a lighter weight. Apple’s iPhone Air was the company’s most interesting new iPhone this year, at least insofar as it was the one most different from previous iPhones. We came away impressed by its size and weight in our…
