Trump picks qualified, normal health leader to head CDC; experts still cautious

Trump picks qualified, normal health leader to head CDC; experts still cautious

fivenewscrypto    avril 20, 2026   

President Trump on Thursday announced his third nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Dr. Erica Schwartz, a well-qualified former public health official and board-certified physician in preventive medicine, who has publicly supported vaccination and followed evidence-based medicine.

The uncontroversial pick comes amid concern within the administration that the aggressive anti-vaccine agenda from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who has no medical, science, or public health background—has become a liability for the party in the lead up to the midterms.

Schwartz was deputy surgeon general in Trump's first administration. She spent much of her career as a Navy officer, held the role of Chief Medical Officer with the US Coast Guard, and is a retired rear admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She has a medical degree from Brown University, a master's degree in public health, and a law degree from the University of Maryland. During the pandemic, she was involved in the federal rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

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$25,000 buys plenty of used EVs: Here are some options

$25,000 buys plenty of used EVs: Here are some options

fivenewscrypto    avril 20, 2026   

Whether you're considering an electric vehicle because of gas prices or climate change, there has probably never been a better time to buy a used EV, despite that the Trump administration abolished the used clean vehicle tax credit last year. When we started this ongoing series looking at used EV options, the initial idea was to see what was available at bargain-basement prices. But today we're looking at the $20,000–$25,000 bracket, and we're firmly out of the basement, with thousands of EVs across the country to choose from.

If you're only spending $5,000 on an EV, you're looking at much older models with smaller batteries that never had that much range even when new. But at four or five times that sum, the net casts much, much wider. Buyers can start being a little choosy here, particularly as ex-lease cars begin filling dealership lots this year.

For those in the market, it helps that EVs face lower residuals than equivalent hydrocarbon-powered cars. All those incentives given to the original purchaser are passed along to future owners, but according to a Deloitte report, EV residuals are underperforming even more than expected. While I might expect most Ars Technica readers to see the potential, "many US consumers remain cautious about range, charge time, price, battery replacement cost, and public charging access," says Deloitte. Changing that will require automakers and car salespeople to do a much better job explaining battery longevity and range, according to the consulting company.

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Satellite and drone images reveal big delays in US data center construction

Satellite and drone images reveal big delays in US data center construction

fivenewscrypto    avril 20, 2026   

Silicon Valley has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into building ever-larger AI data centers that require as much electricity as hundreds of thousands of US homes—but that massive buildout faces significant construction and power challenges along with growing local resistance. Now satellite imagery is showing that nearly 40 percent of US data center projects may fail to be completed this year as scheduled.

The Financial Times drew upon satellite imagery from the geospatial data analytics company SynMax showing how much progress has been made in clearing land and laying building foundations for each data center project. It also cross-checked project progress against public statements and permit documents compiled by the industry research group IIR Energy. The resulting analysis revealed how major projects from tech companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and OpenAI are “likely to miss completion dates by more than three months.”

Interviews with more than a dozen industry executives highlighted data center delays caused by “chronic shortages of labor, power and equipment” along with the process of securing the necessary permits, according to the Financial Times. Construction executives involved with OpenAI projects specifically mentioned not having enough tradespeople, such as electricians and pipe fitters, to work on multiple data center projects.

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Amazon won’t release Fire Sticks that support sideloading anymore

Amazon won’t release Fire Sticks that support sideloading anymore

fivenewscrypto    avril 19, 2026   

The writing was on the wall, and now it's on Amazon’s website. Newly released Fire Sticks will not support the sideloading of Android apps or any other software from outside Amazon’s official app store.

The proof comes from an update to Amazon’s website for developers, which currently reads:

Starting with Fire TV Stick 4K Select [which came out in October], all future Fire TV Sticks will run on Vega.

According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the website has included that statement since at least January. But Amazon hasn’t made this declaration so outrightly to consumers, many of whom are just now learning about Amazon’s commitment to its new, proprietary operating system (OS), Vega OS. Amazon declined to comment to Lowpass this week after “multiple sources with knowledge of” Amazon’s plans reportedly told the publication that all future Fire TV sticks would launch with Vega.

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Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic The Dog Stars drops first trailer

Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic The Dog Stars drops first trailer

fivenewscrypto    avril 19, 2026   

Post-apocalyptic scenarios are a longtime staple of science fiction, and director Ridley Scott's latest film, The Dog Stars, falls firmly into that subgenre. Based on Peter Heller's critically acclaimed 2012 novel, the story depicts the aftermath of a deadly flu virus that wiped out most of humanity. The studio released the first trailer at CinemaCon, introduced by a video message from Scott, who said that his adaptation "is particularly tailored for the big screen. Every frame, I hope, will really blow you away."

Per the official logline, the film is "a riveting, epic thriller set in a world where survival is instinct, but humanity is a choice. Scott tells the story of Hig, a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley, has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world until a mysterious radio transmission spurs Hig to venture into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exists."

Jacob Elordi stars as Hig, alongside Josh Brolin as Bangley; Margaret Qualley plays a young medic named Cima; and Guy Pearce is a former Navy SEAL Pops who also happens to be Cima's father. Allison Janney and Benedict Wong will also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles. (Janney, clad in what looks like a vintage stewardess uniform, briefly appears in the trailer.)

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Artemis II pilot talks about what it was really like to fly and land in Orion

Artemis II pilot talks about what it was really like to fly and land in Orion

fivenewscrypto    avril 19, 2026   

The crew of Artemis II spoke with the media on Thursday, six days after returning to Earth following their mission around the Moon. After a news conference, the astronauts gave a handful of interviews, and Ars was able to speak with Orion's pilot, Victor Glover.

Glover and Ars first connected nearly a decade ago as part of our homage to Apollo, The Greatest Leap. Glover now stands at the vanguard of our modern Apollo program, named Artemis, which aims to return humans to the Moon and establish a semi-permanent base there.

Glover, an accomplished naval aviator, first went to space in November 2020 as the pilot on the first operational Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station. Two years after he landed back on Earth, Glover was assigned to the Artemis II mission and tasked with a majority of the test piloting of the Orion spacecraft during the outbound and return journey from the Moon.

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Meta's AI spending spree is helping make its Quest headsets more expensive

Meta's AI spending spree is helping make its Quest headsets more expensive

fivenewscrypto    avril 19, 2026   

The rising costs of RAM and other computing components are pushing up the price of Meta's Quest VR headsets, which the company says will increase by $50–$100 (about 12–20 percent) starting on April 19. In announcing that price increase on Thursday, the company cited the "global surge in the price of critical components—specifically memory chips—[that] is impacting almost every category of consumer electronics, including VR."

But unlike many of the other tech companies that have been pushed into similar price increases in recent months, Meta's own spending priorities are at least partly to blame for the rising prices of those components. The company's recent hard pivot to the "AI superintelligence" race has directly contributed to the conditions that are now making its own Quest headsets more expensive.

Spending like a drunk sailor

In January, Meta announced that it plans to spend $115 billion to $135 billion on capital expenditures this year, up significantly from $72 billion in 2025 and just $28 billion as recently as 2023. The vast majority of that investment is going into AI infrastructure, including a recent $21 billion in new investment in data center company CoreWeave (in addition to $14.2 billion originally committed) and an additional $10 billion recently committed to a planned El Paso data center (up from $1.5 billion initially).

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