Month: November 2016

Enlarge / The cast of the program is introduced. (credit: John Timmer)

To promote its upcoming new miniseries Mars, the National Geographic Channel convinced its associated magazine to print a Mars-focused issue, and it set up a VR-Mars outpost in the middle of New York City. For the channel, the miniseries is more than just a new show; it's part of an effort to rebrand itself as a source of serious, premium, science-focused content.

So, while the series' focus is a fictional drama about the Earth's first attempt at colonizing Mars, a strong effort has been made to be as accurate and realistic as possible. Fictional segments are mixed in with documentary footage from the present day, with experts talking about what it would take to get people to the red planet. The results make for decent TV, but suffer when compared to the recent film The Martian.

A quest for accuracy

In introducing Mars to the New York media, National Geographic gave more time to the program's scientific advisors than it did to the cast. And said advisors were an impressive bunch, including former astronauts, present astronomers, and a professor of aerospace engineering. Their job, as they described it, wasn't just to give scripts a quick sanity check; it was to make sure that everything was accurate.

Enlarge (credit: Gale Force Nine)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games. Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

Did you like the Star Trek episodes that focused on local problems, such as annoying space amoeba threatening Potemkin IV? Or those episodes featuring a broader "clash of civilizations" between the Federation, the Klingons, and/or the Romulans?

Star Trek: Ascendancy is the new $100 board game from Gale Force Nine, and it's all about Big Conflicts. In the game, you build an empire—then bump into others. Conflict will result. Planets will be conquered. Homeworlds will be threatened.

Enlarge / How the Sun can alter the Moon's orbit around the Earth. (credit: Bob King/Sky & Telescope)

The Moon follows an elliptical path around the Earth, with an average eccentricity of about 0.055 (a perfect circle has an eccentricity of 0). This means that, at its closest approach, the Moon comes within 363,400km of our planet, and at its most distant the Moon is 405,500km. When the Moon is full at the perigee of this orbit, it has come to be known as a "Supermoon."

And yes, we use the designation "Supermoon" because, even though it was originally coined back in 1979 by an astrologer, NASA has now adopted it. We shall too, partly because the astronomy of why this month's Supermoon has gotten so much attention is interesting. Supermoon is also an easier term to use than, say, a perigee full Moon.

But this month's Supermoon is special. The eccentricity above is calculated based upon the Earth-Moon system, but other celestial bodies also influence the Moon's orbit through gravity. The Sun plays the largest role, but so too does Jupiter and even some of the smaller planets. When factoring in these other influences, the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit can actually vary by as little as 0.026 and as much as 0.077.

Billionaire Russian anti-virus developer Eugene Kaspersky has penned an angry blog post titled "That's It. I've Had Enough!" to complain about Microsoft and Windows 10. Specifically, Kaspersky argues that the way Microsoft bundled Defender with Windows 10 is anti-competitive: he says that Microsoft has created obstacles to third-party products and is acting against the interests of the developers of third-party security software.

Accordingly, Kaspersky says that he has filed complaints with competition authorities in the EU and Russia. He asks that they force Microsoft to cease the behavior he feels is anti-competitive.

Microsoft has integrated anti-malware software to ensure that every Windows system has a basic level of protection without requiring any additional third-party purchases or installations. Here's how the Microsoft setup works, and the way it has worked since Windows 8: built-in MS anti-malware software automatically disables itself if it detects a third-party product is installed and up-to-date. Microsoft chose this behavior to keep its OEM partners happy, since many of them depend on kickbacks from pre-installed third-party antivirus software.