Enlarge / WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, looks on during a press conference at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva, on December 14, 2022. (credit: Getty | FABRICE COFFRINI)

While the World Health Organization says it's continuing to urge China to share data and cooperate with investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the United Nations' health agency is calling out another country for lack of transparency—the United States.

WHO officials on Friday said that the US has not shared reports or data from federal agencies that have assessed how the COVID-19 pandemic began. That includes the latest report by the Department of Energy, which determined with "low confidence" that the pandemic likely began due to a laboratory accident.

"As of right now, we don't have access to those reports or the data that is underlying how those reports were generated," Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, said in a press briefing Friday. "Again, we reiterate, that any agency that has information on this, it remains vital that that information is shared so that scientific debate, that this discussion, can move forward. Without that, we are not able to move forward in our understanding."

Enlarge / An AI-generated image of a robot eagerly writing a submission to Clarkesworld. (credit: Ars Technica)

One side effect of unlimited content-creation machines—generative AI—is unlimited content. On Monday, the editor of the renowned sci-fi publication Clarkesworld Magazine announced that he had temporarily closed story submissions due to a massive increase in machine-generated stories sent to the publication.

In a graph shared on Twitter, Clarkesworld editor Neil Clarke tallied the number of banned writers submitting plagiarized or machine-generated stories. The numbers totaled 500 in February, up from just over 100 in January and a low baseline of around 25 in October 2022. The rise in banned submissions roughly coincides with the release of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022.

A graph provided by Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine: "This is the number of people we've had to ban by month. Prior to late 2022, that was mostly plagiarism. Now it's machine-generated submissions." (credit: Neil Clarke)

Large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT have been trained on millions of books and websites and can author original stories quickly. They don't work autonomously, however, and a human must guide their output with a prompt that the AI model then attempts to automatically complete.

Enlarge / Watch out, if SMB3 is any guide, he breathes lasers...

Nintendo is often referred to as "the Disney of video games." But while Nintendo has long matched Disney's reputation for family-friendly home entertainment, it had nothing that could compare to Disney's domination in the physical world of theme parks.

That started to change in 2021, when Super Nintendo World finally opened in Osaka's Universal Studios Japan. Now, a very similar experience is coming to America with the opening of the Super Nintendo World section of Universal Studios Hollywood.

Ars got a sneak peek at the new section of the park just ahead of its Friday opening and came away utterly enchanted by the charming interactivity and Disney-esque attention to detail apparent throughout the park's newest themed area.

Enlarge / A scene from Proletariat's Spellbreak illustrating union members dodging alleged management interference.

Last month, workers at Spellbreak studio Proletariat became the third group within Activision Blizzard to form a union. Today, though, the Communication Workers of America is pulling back on its push for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election that could have forced parent company Activision Blizzard to recognize that union. In doing so, the CWA cites actions by Proletariat CEO Seth Sivak that have made "a free and fair election impossible."

In a statement provided to Ars Technica, a CWA spokesperson said Sivak "chose to follow Activision Blizzard's lead and responded to the workers' desire to form a union with confrontational tactics." Those tactics include "a series of meetings that demoralized and disempowered the group," according to the CWA.

Proletariat Software Engineer Dustin Yost said in an accompanying statement that those management meetings "took their toll" on the group by "fram[ing] the conversation as a personal betrayal, instead [of] respecting our right to join together to protect ourselves and have a seat at the table..."

Enlarge / 11th Hour Racing Team is one of five teams competing in the IMOCA class of this year's Ocean Race, a six-month dash across the world. The IMOCA-class yachts use foils and can reach more than 35 knots. (credit: Amory Ross / 11th Hour Racing)

Just over a week ago, one of the world's most grueling races got underway from Spain. Eleven teams, including five International Monohull Open Class Association (IMOCA)-class racing yachts, departed Alicante in Spain for the first leg of a 32,000-nautical-mile (60,000-km) route that includes a 12,750-nautical-mile stretch between South Africa and Brazil through the Southern Ocean. The crews have little in the way of creature comforts beyond freeze-dried meals and a bucket for a bathroom. Along the way, the boats will collect scientific data on the state of our oceans, from dissolved gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide to microplastics.

IMOCA-class boats are 60 feet (18.3 m) long and feature a single hull made from carbon fiber. In addition to sails, the yachts have retractable foils that lift the hull out of the water above 18 knots (33 km/h) and allow a top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h) or more. Designers have some freedom with the hull and sail shape, but everyone has to use the same design of masts, booms, and static rigging.

Mālama is one such boat, and it's crewed by the 11th Hour Racing team. In addition to collecting data on climate change, the team worked to minimize the carbon impact of building the yacht itself, experimenting where allowed with lightweight, sustainable materials like balsa or composites made from flax. "I like to think of where can we use renewables that actually adds performance to the program," said Simon Fisher, navigator for the 11th Hour team.