Month: October 2019

Enlarge / Look at this exercise of copyright's fair use doctrine. (credit: Warner Music Group / Unknown associate of Devon Archer)

Twitter has removed a video from a tweet by Donald Trump in response to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request from Warner Music Group. The video modified a short clip from the Nickelback music video "Photograph" to criticize former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden is seeking the Democratic nod to challenge Trump in the 2020 election.

Cornell University legal scholar James Grimmelmann told Ars that Donald Trump has a strong fair use claim. The video only used a few seconds of the Nickelback music video, and it does so in a way that poses no threat to sales of the original song—two factors that typically point toward a finding of fair use.

The music video for "Photograph" begins with a shot of Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger holding up a framed photograph as he sings, "Look at this photograph. Every time I do, it makes me laugh." People started to modify the video clip and put other photos in the frame. An official meme was born.

Last week, we gave you our first impressions of Ring Fit Adventure and discussed whether or not it will be able to distract us from the drudgery of regular exercise. Today, we've put together a short video to give you a more visual idea of how the game works up a sweat.

Please don't judge my exercise form too harshly. Working out on camera was not in my official job description.

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  "Letting people see pictures of me exercising" was not in my Ars Technica job description. Yet here we are.

Stick around all the way to the end of the video, too, to see our quick examination of how Ring Fit Adventure compares to a real Pilates ring (which does not interact with your Nintendo Switch in any way). I had to lie down on the ground in a New York City park to film this portion of the video, so I really hope you enjoy it.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Sciepro)

An Oregon doctor filed a $5.25 million lawsuit Wednesday against a fertility clinic at the Oregon Health & Science University for being “incredibly irresponsible” with his sperm.

Dr. Bryce Cleary, 53, alleges that the OHSU clinic used his 1989 sperm donation to father at least 17 children—some who live in his area—despite him making an agreement with the clinic at the time that his sperm would be used for no more than five children, all born to women living out of the state.

Dr. Cleary, who lives in Corvallis, learned that at least two of his unexpected biological children conceived through the clinic have attended the same schools, as well as church and social activities, as some of the children he has with his wife—three sons and an adopted daughter.

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  This gallery highlights images captured by the Mars Orbiter Mission. Here, a global mosaic of Mars. [credit: ISRO ]

Without fanfare, an Indian spacecraft just completed its fifth year in orbit around Mars last week. As the spacecraft nears the end of its design lifetime, this is a moment that seems worth a little more recognition.

When it launched the Mars Orbiter Mission in November, 2013, India had never attempted an interplanetary flight before. And Mars is really treacherous. About 50% of spacecraft sent to Mars fail either upon launch, attempting to enter orbit, or landing on the surface. India made it on the country's first try, with a budget significantly less than $100 million. The spacecraft remains in good working order, with fuel for at least another year of operations.

While the orbiter didn't make any huge new scientific discoveries—it had neither the very best cameras nor instruments among its modest 15kg of payload—it carried far more weight symbolically as it expanded the community of Mars exploration beyond the traditional space-faring nations. Before the Mars Orbiter Mission reached Mars, only the United States, Soviet Union, and European Space Agency had successfully sent robotic missions to Mars.

Enlarge / The Pukguksong-3 missile rises after being launched from a towed barge off North Korea's eastern coast. (credit: Rodong Sinmun)

On October 2, the military of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) test-launched what appears to be a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) near the port city of Wosan on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula. The missile flew roughly 280 miles (450km), but it reached an altitude of about 575 miles (910 km)—making this the longest-range solid-fuel missile North Korea has ever tested.

The missile likely would have a range between 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) to over 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) under normal launching conditions. Japanese government officials said that they believed the missile landed inside Japan's exclusive economic zone.

According to North Korea's Rodong Sinmun (or Labor Newspaper), the missile was the Pukguksong-3 ("Polaris-3"), the third iteration of the DPRK's sub-launched missile. "The new ballistic missile's test launch was carried out with a high-angle-launch method," the paper reported:

Enlarge / Þingvellir or Thingvellir, is a national park in southwestern Iceland, about 40 km northeast of Iceland's capital, Reykjavík. It's a site of geological significance, as the visuals may indicate. (credit: Ray Wise/Getty Images)

It’s right there in the name: “plate tectonics.” Geology’s organizing theory hinges on plates—thin, interlocking pieces of Earth’s rocky skin. Plates’ movements explain earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains, the formation of mineral resources, a habitable climate, and much else. They’re part of the engine that drags carbon from the atmosphere down into Earth’s mantle, preventing a runaway greenhouse climate like Venus. Their recycling through the mantle helps to release heat from Earth’s liquid metal core, making it churn and generate a magnetic field to protect our atmosphere from erosion by the solar wind.

The name may not have changed, but today the theory is in the midst of an upgrade to include a deeper level—both in our understanding and in its depth in our planet. “There is a huge transformation,” says Thorsten Becker, the Distinguished Chair in Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin. “Where we say: ‘plate tectonics’ now, we might mean something that’s entirely different than the 1970s.”

Plate Tectonics emerged in the late1960s when geologists realized that plates move on Earth’s surface at fingernail-growth speeds side-swipe each other at some places (like California) and converge at others (like Japan). When they converge, one plate plunges down into Earth’s mantle under the other plate, but what happened to it deeper in the mantle remained a mystery for most of the 20th century. Like an ancient map labeled “here be dragons,” knowledge of the mantle remained skin-deep except for its major boundaries.