science editor of Gizmodo, contributes science and culture coverage. Beth Mole, who has a PhD in microbiology, handles Ars health coverage. She was formerly at Science News. Eric Berger, formerly of the Houston Chronicle, covers space exploration. John Timmer is the science editor for Ars. He formerly taught scientific writing and science journalism at Stony Brook University and Weill Cornell Medical College. He earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and his PhD from University of California, Berkeley and worked as a postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Former Hardware and Windows editor Peter Bright was convicted in 2020 of attempted child enticement. Revenue The cost of operating Ars Technica has always been funded primarily by advertising. Originally handled by Federated Media Publishing, selling advertising space on the website is now managed by Condé Nast. In addition to online advertising, Ars Technica has sold subscriptions to the website since 2001, now named Ars Premier subscriptions. Subscribers are not shown advertisements, and receive benefits including the ability to see exclusive articles, post in certain areas of the Ars Technica forum, and participate in live chat rooms with notable people in the computer industry. To a lesser extent, revenue is also collected from content sponsorship. A series of articles about the future of collaboration was sponsored by IBM, and the site's Exploring Datacenters section is sponsored by data-management company NetApp. Ars Technica also collects revenue from affiliate marketing by advertising deals and discounts from online retailers, and from the sale of Ars Technica-branded merchandise. Advertisement-block On March 5, 2010, Ars Technica experimentally blocked readers who used Adblock Plus—one of several computer programs that stop advertisements from being displayed in a web browser—from viewing the website. Fisher estimated 40% of the website's readers had the software installed at the time. The next day, the block was lifted, and the article "Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love" was published on Ars Technica, imploring readers not to use the software on websites they care about: The block and article were controversial, generating articles on other websites about them, and the broader issue of advertising ethics. Readers of Ars Technica generally followed Fisher's persuasion; the day after his article was published, 25,000 readers who used the software had allowed the display of advertisements on Ars Technica in their browser, and 200 readers had subscribed to Ars Premier. In February 2016, Fisher noted, "That