A longstanding scientific belief about a link between cancer prevalence and animal body size has tested for the first time in our new study ranging across hundreds of animal species.

If larger animals have more cells, and cancer comes from cells going rogue, then the largest animals on Earth—like elephants and whales—should be riddled with tumours. Yet, for decades, there has been little evidence to support this idea.

Many species seem to defy this expectation entirely. For example, budgies are notorious among pet owners for being prone to renal cancer despite weighing only 35 g. Yet cancer only accounts for around 2 percent of mortality among roe deer (up to 35 kg).

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When you think about it, the keyboard is the most complex video game controller in common use today, with over 100 distinct inputs arranged in a vast grid. Yet even the most complex keyboard-controlled games today tend to only use a relative handful of all those available keys for actual gameplay purposes.

The biggest exception to this rule is a typing game, which by definition asks players to send their fingers flying across every single letter on the keyboard (and then some) in quick succession. By default, though, typing games tend to take the form of extremely basic typing tutorials, where the gameplay amounts to little more than typing out words and sentences by rote as they appear on screen, maybe with a few cute accompanying animations.

Typing "gibbon" quickly has rarely felt this tense or important. Credit: Outer Brain Studios

Blood Typers adds some much-needed complexity to that basic type-the-word-you-see concept, layering its typing tests on top of a full-fledged survival horror game reminiscent of the original PlayStation era. The result is an amazingly tense and compelling action adventure that also serves as a great way to hone your touch-typing skills.

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Over the last month there has been something more than a minor kerfuffle in the space industry over the return of two NASA astronauts from the International Space Station.

The fate of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched on the first crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on June 5, 2024, has become a political issue after President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the astronauts' return was held up by the Biden White House.

In February, Trump and Musk appeared on FOX News. During the joint interview, the subject of Wilmore and Williams came up. They remain in space today after NASA decided it would be best they did not fly home in their malfunctioning Starliner spacecraft—but would return in a SpaceX-built Crew Dragon.

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The US military's robotic mini-space shuttle dropped out of orbit and glided to a runway in California late Thursday, ending a 434-day mission that pioneered new ways of maneuvering in space.

The X-37B spaceplane touched down on Runway 12 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 11:22 pm local time Thursday (2:22 am EST Friday), capping its high-flying mission with an automated reentry and landing on the nearly three-mile-long runway at the West Coast's spaceport.

The Space Force did not publicize the spacecraft's return ahead of time, keeping with the Pentagon's policy of secrecy surrounding the X-37B program. This was the seventh flight of an X-37B spaceplane, or Orbital Test Vehicle, since its first foray into orbit in 2010.

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The AI industry has a new buzzword: "PhD-level AI." According to a report from The Information, OpenAI may be planning to launch several specialized AI "agent" products including a $20,000 monthly tier focused on supporting "PhD-level research." Other reportedly planned agents include a "high-income knowledge worker" assistant at $2,000 monthly and a software developer agent at $10,000 monthly.

OpenAI has not yet confirmed these prices, but they have mentioned PhD-level AI capabilities before. So what exactly constitutes "PhD-level AI"? The term refers to models that supposedly perform tasks requiring doctoral-level expertise. These include agents conducting advanced research, writing and debugging complex code without human intervention, and analyzing large datasets to generate comprehensive reports. The key claim is that these models can tackle problems that typically require years of specialized academic training.

Companies like OpenAI base their "PhD-level" claims on performance in specific benchmark tests. For example, OpenAI's o1 series models reportedly performed well in science, coding, and math tests, with results similar to human PhD students on challenging tasks. The company's Deep Research tool, which can generate research papers with citations, scored 26.6 percent on "Humanity's Last Exam," a comprehensive evaluation covering over 3,000 questions across more than 100 subjects.

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The measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico has reached 208 cases.

Texas officials reported 198 confirmed cases across nine counties as of Friday, with 23 people requiring hospitalization since the outbreak exploded at the end of January. Most of the cases continue to be in children and teens, with 153 of the 198 cases being between the ages of 0 and 17. Eleven cases have no confirmed age listed. All but five cases are in people who are unvaccinated or have no vaccination record.

Texas officials have so far reported one death in the outbreak in an unvaccinated school-aged child with no underlying health conditions. Media reports have identified the child as being a 6-year-old.

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A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates.

According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.

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Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho returns to the big screen this weekend with the sci-fi film Mickey 17. If you're expecting the subtly devastating social commentary of his 2019 drama/horror/thriller-hybrid Parasite, I suspect you'll be disappointed. Mickey 17 is a very different beast in both aesthetic and tone. When the first trailer dropped, I wrote that the film felt like a darkly comedic version of Duncan Jones' 2009 film Moon, with a dash of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. I stand by that assessment, and it proves to be a winning combination.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

The film is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton's inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox—a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called "a crappy immortality" and expanded from there into a full-length novel. (Ashton also penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues, which was published in 2023.)

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Nearly 1 million Windows devices were targeted in recent months by a sophisticated "malvertising" campaign that surreptitiously stole login credentials, cryptocurrency, and other sensitive information from infected machines, Microsoft said.

The campaign began in December, when the attackers, who remain unknown, seeded websites with links that downloaded ads from malicious servers. The links led targeted machines through several intermediary sites until finally arriving at repositories on Microsoft-owned GitHub, which hosted a raft of malicious files.

Chain of events

The malware was loaded in four stages, each of which acted as a building block for the next. Early stages collected device information, presumably to tailor configurations for the later ones. Later ones disabled malware detection apps and connected to command-and-control servers; affected devices remained infected even after being rebooted.

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On Thursday, music labels sought to add nearly 500 more sound recordings to a lawsuit accusing the Internet Archive (IA) of mass copyright infringement through its Great 78 Project, which seeks to digitize all 3 million three-minute recordings published on 78 revolutions-per-minute (RPM) records from about 1898 to the 1950s.

If the labels' proposed second amended complaint is accepted by the court, damages sought in the case—which some already feared could financially ruin IA and shut it down for good—could increase to almost $700 million. (Initially, the labels sought about $400 million in damages.)

IA did not respond to Ars' request for comment, but the filing noted that IA has not consented to music labels' motion to amend their complaint.

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Although digital media has surpassed physical media in popularity, there are still plenty of reasons for movie buffs and TV fans to hold onto, and even continue buying, DVDs. With physical media, owners are assured that they'll always be able to play their favorite titles, so long as they take care of their discs. While digital copies are sometimes abruptly ripped away from viewers, physical media owners don't have to worry about a corporation ruining their Friday night movie plans. At least, that's what we thought.

It turns out that if your DVD collection includes titles distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the home movie distribution arm of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), you may one day open up the box to find a case of DVD rot.

Recently, Chris Bumbray, editor-in-chief of movie news and reviews site JoBlo, detailed what would be a harrowing experience for any film collector. He said he recently tried to play his Passage to Marseille DVD, but “after about an hour, the disc simply stopped working.” He said “the same thing happened” with Across the Pacific. Bumbray bought a new DVD player but still wasn’t able to play his Desperate Journey disc. The latter case was especially alarming because, like a lot of classic films and shows, the title isn’t available as a digital copy.

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Google released its scheduled March Pixel Drop earlier this week, adding AI scam detection, multi-camera streaming, and—possibly—buggy haptics. Pixel owners have been grumbling about the feel of vibrations, which have been described as "springy" and "hollow." Others say the haptics have gotten distractingly harsh in some places.

Android devices have long trailed Apple when it comes to haptic feedback—the latter's Taptic Engine generally puts other phones to shame with its power and precision. However, Google has made great progress with Pixel phones. It occasionally gloats about how much Pixel haptics have improved. It would seem that this attention to detail is not born out in the latest update, though.

Some of this confusion may be down to the addition of notification cooldown, a feature that was previously only in the Android 16 beta. This opt-out feature aims to reduce the annoyance of receiving multiple notifications in quick succession. The first ping you get in a two-minute period will be normal, but if you get another within a few seconds, it will have lower volume and vibration intensity. It tapers off until notifications don't make any additional fuss. You can still find all those notifications in their usual home in the drop-down shade.

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AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D is probably the best CPU you can buy if you're trying to put together a fast gaming PC, thanks to its eight Zen 5 CPU cores and extra helping of 3D V-Cache. You don't really need more CPU cores than this to play games, and most games benefit from the extra cache more than they do from a bit of extra clock speed.

AMD announced today that it's following up the 9800X3D with two higher-end X3D processors next week. The 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D are both launching on March 12 for $599 and $699, respectively, the same as the launch pricing for the last-generation 7900X3D and 7950X3D but a couple hundred dollars more expensive than the current street pricing for the Ryzen 9900X and 9950X.

AMD recommends the 9900X3D and 9950X3D to people whose gaming PCs also do other heavy-duty non-gaming work or for streamers whose gaming PCs are simultaneously running other apps. But they might also appeal to people who would normally just buy a 9800X3D because that processor has been difficult to find at its $479 MSRP since launching last fall. If a 9800X3D already costs nearly $600, why not spring for a faster chip if you can get one?

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Intuitive Machines announced on Friday morning that its Athena mission to the surface of the Moon, which landed on its side, has ended.

"With the direction of the Sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," the company said in a statement. "The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."

Athena, a commercially developed lander, touched down on the lunar surface on Thursday at 11:28 am local time in Houston (17:28 UTC). The probe landed within 250 meters of its targeted landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the Moon. This is the southernmost location that any probe has landed on the Moon, within a few degrees of the lunar south pole.

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Ahead of the first-ever White House Crypto Summit Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve that a factsheet claimed delivers on his promise to make America the "crypto capital of the world."

Trump's order requires all federal agencies currently holding bitcoins seized as part of a criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceeding to transfer those bitcoins to the Treasury Department, which itself already has a store of bitcoins. Additionally, any other digital assets forfeited will be collected in a separate Digital Assets Stockpile.

But while Trump likely anticipates that bitcoin fans will be over the moon about this news—his announcement of the reserve and looser crypto regulations helped send bitcoin's price to its all-time high of $109,000 in January, Reuters noted—some cryptocurrency enthusiasts were clearly disappointed that Trump's order confirmed that the US currently has no plans to buy any more bitcoins at this time.

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Electric motors are, in so many ways, much better than internal combustion engines. They don't waste most of the energy you put into them as heat and sound, they're easy to control, and they make huge amounts of torque almost instantly. Having recently driven BMW's 430i and i4 back to back over the course of two weeks, the electric version was easier in traffic and more responsive on a twisty road. Electric wins, then. Except at the very high end, it seems.

Because even though electric motors can pack a punch, people paying big money for super- and hypercars are increasingly disinterested in those cars being electrified. So much so that Maserati has canceled the all-electric version of the MC20.

The MC20 debuted in 2020. No longer associated with Ferrari after that brand was spun out and IPO'd, the MC20 could offer a full carbon-fiber monocoque and an engine with very clever F1-derived combustion technology, undercutting its now-independent Italian competitor to the tune of more than $100,000 in the process.

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Although the Trump administration will not publicly release its budget request for at least a few more weeks, senior agency officials are starting to be briefed on the president's priorities.

This includes NASA. As expected, the president's plan for the space agency includes some significant shakeups, including a desire to move elements of NASA headquarters to field centers around the country. However, in perhaps the most drastic change, the White House seeks to massively cut funding for science programs at the space agency.

Multiple people familiar with the White House proposal said cuts to NASA's "Science Mission Directorate" could be as high as 50 percent. These sources emphasized that no decisions are final, and there are some scenarios in which the cuts to NASA's science programs would be less. But the intent is to slash science.

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SpaceX's Starship launcher spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to Elon Musk's rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago.

Starship and its Super Heavy booster, loaded with millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants, lumbered off their launch pad in Texas at 5:30 pm CST (6:30 pm EST; 23:30 UTC) to begin the eighth full-scale test flight of SpaceX's new-generation rocket. Thirty-three Raptor engines propelled the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket through a clear afternoon sky with more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo lunar program.

Repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished with Starship twice before, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage roughly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, then guided itself back to the Texas coastline for a catch by mechanical arms on the launch pad's tower. SpaceX is now 3-for-3 with attempts to catch a Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, a sign that engineers are well on their way to mastering how to recover and reuse boosters in a similar way as they do with the smaller workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

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Welcome to Edition 7.34 of the Rocket Report! What a day in space Thursday was. During the morning hours we saw the triumphant second flight of the Ariane 6 rocket, a pivotal moment for European sovereignty in space. Then Intuitive Machines had a partially successful landing on the Moon. And finally, on Thursday evening, SpaceX's Starship failed during its second consecutive test flight.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Firefly sets date for next Alpha launch. Having completed a static-fire test, Firefly Aerospace has set a target date of March 15 for the launch of its "Message in a Booster" mission. The Alpha rocket will launch Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 spacecraft from Vandenberg Space Force Base, with the 52-minute launch window opening at 6:25 am PT (14:25 UTC). Lockheed is self-funding the demonstration mission of its new satellite bus, the LM 400, which it says can serve civil, military, and commercial customers.

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For a long time, the cheapest iPhones were basically just iPhones that were older than the current flagship, but last week’s release of the $600 iPhone 16e marks a big change in how Apple is approaching its lineup.

Rather than a repackaging of an old iPhone, the 16e is the latest main iPhone—that is, the iPhone 16—with a bunch of stuff stripped away.

There are several potential advantages to this change. In theory, it allows Apple to support its lower-end offerings for longer with software updates, and it gives entry-level buyers access to more current technologies and features. It also simplifies the marketplace of accessories and the like.

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