There Are Already More Measles Cases in the US This Year Than All of 2023

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association sent out separate but similar pleas on Monday for unvaccinated Americans to get vaccinated against the extremely contagious measles virus as vaccination rates have slipped, cases are rising globally and nationally, and the spring-break travel period is beginning. In the first 12 weeks … Read more

The FCC Now Says Broadband Speed Should Be at Least 100 Mbps

The Federal Communications Commission this week voted to raise its internet speed benchmark for the first time since January 2015, concluding that modern broadband service should provide at least 100 Mbps download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speeds. An FCC press release after Thursday’s 3-2 vote said the 100 Mbps/20 Mbps benchmark “is based on … Read more

A Startup Will Try to Mine Helium-3 on the Moon

Two of Blue Origin’s earliest employees, former president Rob Meyerson and chief architect Gary Lai, have started a company that seeks to extract helium-3 from the lunar surface, return it to Earth, and sell it for applications here. The company has been operating in stealth since its founding in 2022, but it emerged on Wednesday … Read more

SpaceX Finally Gets Starship Into Space Without Exploding

SpaceX has had a heck of a time getting the worlds tallest, most powerful rocket off the ground. Starship rockets are mostly known for exploding and leaving craters at their launch pads while destroying delicate ecosystems. But the company finally got it right Thursday morning and sent the towering rocket into actual space. Coming back … Read more

A 62-Year-Old German Man Got 217 Covid Shots—and Was Totally Fine

A 62-year-old man in Germany decided to get 217 Covid-19 vaccinations over the course of 29 months —for “private reasons.” But, somewhat surprisingly, he doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects from the excessive immunization, according to a newly published case study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The case is just one person, of … Read more

Leap Day Broke New Zealand’s Gas Stations

February 29 is a weird day. It comes around once every four years, bringing with it questions about if we should be paid extra for the day, if it’s good or bad luck to get engaged on the sacred day and guesses as to whether fancy watches will keep up with the extra day. In … Read more

Measles Strikes a Florida Elementary School With Over 100 Unvaccinated Kids

Florida health officials on Sunday announced an investigation into a cluster of measles cases at an elementary school in the Fort Lauderdale area with a low vaccination rate, a scenario health experts fear will become more and more common amid slipping vaccination rates nationwide. On Friday, Broward County Public School reported a confirmed case of … Read more

Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

After months of resisting, Air Canada was forced to give a partial refund to a grieving passenger who was misled by an airline chatbot inaccurately explaining the airline’s bereavement travel policy. On the day Jake Moffatt’s grandmother died, Moffat immediately visited Air Canada’s website to book a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Unsure of how … Read more

NASA Engineers Are Racing to Fix Voyager 1

Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission’s loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft. The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected … Read more