FreeBSD has its jails technology, and it seems NetBSD might be getting something similar soon. Jails for NetBSD aims to bring lightweight, kernel-enforced isolation to NetBSD. The system is intended to remain fully NetBSD-native.
A recording from Michael McFaul's live video
Join me for a discussion as we mark four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
We have a global intelligence crisis, in that a lot of people are being really fucking stupid.
As I discussed in this week’s free piece, alleged financial analyst Citrini Research put out a truly awful screed called the “2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” — a slop-filled scare-fiction
As it faces yet another set of delays, NASA’s Artemis programme is being shaken up, delaying an actual moon landing in favour of smaller, faster steps forward
Frailty can typically only be lessened through lifestyle changes, but a stem cell therapy seems to target the underlying causes of the condition, boosting the mobility of frail older people
Neuron-powered computer chips can now be easily programmed to play a first-person shooter game, bringing biological computers a step closer to useful applications
Pouring 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine removed up to 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere without harming wildlife, according to the researchers behind an ocean alkalinity enhancement test
Sterner St. Paul Meek was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 8, 1894. He earned as associate of science degree from the University of Chicago in 1914 and continued his education at the University of Alabama, becoming a member of Phi Beta Kappa and earned a bachelor of science in metallurgical engineering.
The dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid, but does that mean we risk suffering the same fate - and should you be worried about the possibility? Leah Crane sets the matter straight
The New Scientist Book Club enjoyed our February read, Tim Winton's far-future-set Juice. Head of books Alison Flood rounds up member thoughts
As the New Scientist Book Club embarks on its read for March, Art Cure, author Daisy Fancourt gives a sneak preview into the myriad ways in which the arts can improve our health
In this extract from Daisy Fancourt's Art Cure, the March read for the New Scientist Book Club, we learn about how art classes transformed life for Russell after he had a stroke
Secret-keeping evolved to maintain social harmony, but it can weigh heavily on us when we can’t stop thinking about them. So, what is the best way to deal with things that we don't want anyone else to know?
Superconducting computing circuits were briefly heralded as the future of computing in the 1980s. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan visits a quantum chip foundry where one company is betting this technology’s second act will revolutionise quantum computers
It is a tool, not a replacement.
It is a tool, not a replacement.
The older I get, the more obvious the devastating effects of alcohol become. Even a fairly modest amount, two to four units, leaves me feeling pretty wrecked, pretty quickly. Not just the evening of and the day after. The mental side effects of feeling despondent and generally down linger for days.
I don't indulge too often, but even five to six times per year is starting to feel like too often. Might be time to ditch it altogether.
In the United States, we are losing our fondness for cash. As in many other
countries, cards and other types of electronic payments now dominate everyday
commerce. To some, this is a loss. Cash represented a certain freedom from
intermediation, a comforting simplicity, that you just don't get from Visa.
The congenital condition spina bifida is often treated surgically in the womb, but many children still go on to have mobility issues. The addition of a patch made up of stem cells from donated placentas could improve their long-term outcomes
The Genode OS Framework 26.02 has been released, and its tentpole improvement is the completion of moving configuration from XML to the new human-inclined data syntax, as we talked about a few months ago.
You may not be aware that FreeBSD has a pretty robust set of tools to run Linux binaries, unmodified. The result? A fast, smooth, fully-featured remote development experience on FreeBSD running Linux binaries transparently via the Linuxulator.
It seems the widespread efforts in Europe to drastically reduce its dependency on US technology companies is starting to worry some people. President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered U.S.
In August 2025, we hailed the emergence of a second Chain Story project championed by Michael A. Stackpole. This is a Sword & Sorcery-focused, contagious set of connected (“chained”) stories. Each is: A standalone tale Readable in any order Free to read Interconnected via a theme involving a Crown Stories are being released every few weeks.
Genetic evidence hints that there was a strong bias for male Neanderthals and female humans to mate, rather than any other combination
Legislation working its way through the UK parliament would ban children from using social media and virtual private networks – but the proposals would endanger online privacy and may not make children safer, say legal experts
Editor's note: a previous version of this newsletter went out with Matt Hughes' name on it, that's my editor who went over it for spelling errors and loaded it into the CMS.
Nearly all of the solar system’s planets are about to file across the night sky in a planetary alignment, and it will be visible from anywhere on Earth
The UK's first geothermal plant in Cornwall is part of a wave of projects aiming to meet growing electricity demand, some of them enabled by technology from oil and gas fracturing
Both boosters and sceptics have strongly held opinions on AI tools like ChatGPT, but after an experiment in vibe coding, I have realised that both camps are wrong, says Jacob Aron
Savage Heroes (Star, February 1977). Cover by Les Edwards A couple more Sword & Sorcery anthology reviews: first up is Savage Heroes (Subtitled Tales of Sorcery & Black Magic) (1977), from British Publisher Star, edited by Eric Pendragon and illustrated by the great Jim Pitts, who is still working today.
I’ve been a .com purist for over two decades of building. Once, I broke that rule and bought a .online TLD for a small project. This is the story of how it went up in flames. ↫ Tony S. An absolute horror story about Google’s dominance over the web, in places nobody really talks about.
Only a few days ago we talked about the concept of client-side decorations, and how more and more desktop environments and operating systems – specifically GNOME and macOS – are putting more and more buttons, menus, and other widgets inside title bars.
Microsoft released an optional cumulative update for Windows 11, and for once, it actually includes something many of you might actually like: it adds Sysmon from Sysinternals to Windows natively, so you no longer have to install it manually.
The environmental impact of SpaceX's planned gargantuan mega-constellation is still being grappled with, but the FCC isn’t required to study it
From ice ages to asteroid strikes, an epic book shows how important it has been for humans to look outwards. Alex Wilkins surveys a climate historian's cosmic sweep
Feedback is excited to learn that University of Maryland researchers are measuring farts in a bid to build a Human Flatus Atlas, a project that seems destined for an Ig Nobel
Post-apocalyptic bunker sci-fi is huge this year as TV front-runners Fallout, Paradise and Silo return. Bethan Ackerley asks whether this is a signal we’ve given up on our real world, or if there is hidden hope
The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
NASA crew members practise emergency rescue drills in a 40-foot-deep pool simulating the lunar surface, as part of tests on a new generation of spacesuit, the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit
Many of us obsess over how much sleep we get each night, and the dangers to our health of not getting enough, but really, there is another way
Join me for a discussion as we mark four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
The alvarezsaurs were thought to have evolved a smaller stature because of their diet of ants and termites, but a new fossil found in Argentina casts doubt on that theory
The discovery of bright yet stable pigments is vanishingly rare, making them hugely valuable. Now chemist Mas Subramanian is unpicking the atomic code of colour and homing in on our most-wanted hue
Code Name: Intrepid is an interesting series from Robert J. Mendenhall, available through his own imprint Blue Planet Press. CNI is a special team of military and civilian experts who handle cases that are extraordinary or of an unusual order in the 1930s.
The commonly used RSA encryption algorithm can now be cracked by a quantum computer with only 100,000 qubits, but the technical challenges to building such a machine remain numerous
Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases
I wrote last May that there was an obvious disadvantage to being the first country to agree trade terms with the United States, particularly when the US is run by an unpredictable, unreliable and dishonest leader.
The drug rapamycin has been held up for its life-extending properties, but whether this treatment – or fasting – actually adds years to your life isn't guaranteed
This must be a universal experience at this point for people who aren’t swayed by the latest and greatest marketing hype around new phone models: there’s just nothing out there that fits one’s needs.
Perhaps Ukraine will finally be rewarded for its incredible resilience
Social media is going the way of alcohol, gambling, and other social sins: Societies are deciding it’s no longer kid stuff. Lawmakers point to compulsive use, exposure to harmful content, and mounting concerns about adolescent mental health.
Fins washing up in the North Pacific suggest that orcas from one subspecies are snacking on other orcas, and researchers think that may explain their different social dynamics
And yet, in the face of unbelievable determination from Ukrainian warriors and civilians, Putin has not achieved a single one of his initial war aims.
Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones
I just made up a Debian trixie setup that has no need for a GUI. In fact, I rarely use the text console either. However, because the machine is dual boot and also serves another purpose, it’s connected to my main monitor and KVM switch.
A cream that directly disrupts the underlying causes of the skin patches seen in the condition vitiligo will be made available on the NHS
Duplicating the information held in quantum computers was thought to be impossible thanks to the no-cloning theorem, but researchers have now found a workaround
People often focus on the bad side effects of vaccines, but they can have some great side effects too, says columnist Michael Le Page. They don’t just protect us from contagious diseases but can also lower the risk of dementia and heart attacks
Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, may have been even more instrumental to the system’s evolution than we thought, forming its rings, shaping its moons and even affecting the planet itself
Good afterevenmorn, Readers! Since the release of Iron Lung, the independent film adaptation of the equally independent video game of the same name, I have been awash in articles, interviews and reviews about the piece.
Join me for a discussion as we mark four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
While Libadwaita applications running in a GNOME desktop environment look great and nicely consistent, they look utterly out of place and jarring when run in Xfce, Pantheon, KDE, and others. The biggest reason for this is GNOME’s insistence on using client-side decorations, which feel at home inside a GNOME environment, but out of place in environments that otherwise do not use them.
Every OpenBSD admin has booted bsd.rd at least once — to install, upgrade, or rescue a broken system. But few people stop to look at what’s actually inside that file. It turns out bsd.rd is a set of nested layers, and you can take it apart on a running system without rebooting anything.
Mysterious signs engraved on objects reveal that a form of proto-writing may have been used in Europe 40,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before the emergence of a full writing system
Expert birdwatchers have changes in their brain structure compared with novices, which probably help them better identify birds and may even protect against age-related cognitive decline
An examination of bones has revealed one of the largest prehistoric mass killings known in Europe, with women, adolescents and children making up most of the 77 victims
How we feel about a night’s sleep can have a bigger impact on mood and grogginess than actual hours of rest. Here’s how to change your mindset to feel more energised
Temnothorax kinomurai, a parasitic ant species found in Japan, reproduces asexually and all of its young develop into queens that try to take over other ants’ colonies
Horses use their larynx to make two sounds simultaneously, so they are effectively singing and whistling at the same time
I have posted a few times on the fiction of Gary Lovisi. He is an author, editor, publisher (Gryphon Books as well as Paperback Parade), and book dealer. While some of his work has come out from his own Gryphon Books, he has also put out works from Ramble House, Wildside Press, and now Stark […]
I have not been active in the John D. MacDonald world for awhile. Time is limited, and interests are many. I recently jumped down the Columbo rabbit hole (I wrote about him back in 2016, and I’ve got a big project in the works for 2027).
We often stop noticing things we’ve become too accustomed to, as a side effect of our brains protecting us from sensory overload. Columnist Helen Thomson shares the evidence-backed ways to learn how to notice again
Can you match the fantasy world on the left with its creator on the right? Kregen _________ 1. John Norman Magira _________ 2. Edmond Hamilton Newhon ________ 3. Gardner F. Fox Janus __________ 4. Charles Allen Gramlich Ur_____________ 5.
H.W. Sanden in Anti-intellectual tech:
Don’t throw out books willingly, as we did with films, music, instruments, software and self-made websites. Be independent, self-contented, revolutionary, intellectual, brave, strong and scholarly. Normalise stating that you are proficient in several skills. And normalise not knowing, and doing something about it.
Don't stop with not throwing out books. Take back everything we gave away, while we still can. Show the children the future they can still have.
The regular, consumer version of Windows 10 isn’t the only Windows release reaching or having reached end-of-life, now middling on under the Extended Security Updates program for the many people sticking with the venerable release.
Despite continuous rumors to the contrary, Oracle is still actively developing Solaris, and it’s been more active than ever lately. Yesterday, the company pushed out another release for customers with the proper support contracts: Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU90.
So here we are, the final wild bunch of my favorite films; films that I have returned to time and time again purely for their entertainment value and healing properties. I’m sure most of the thirty films on my list are favorites for you too, but I hope there are at least one or two titles spread upon this charcuterie board of nostalgia and cheese that you haven’t seen, and might have piqued your interest enough to seek them out....
Read More Read More
I was trading New Year’s resolutions with a circle of friends a few weeks ago, and someone mentioned a big one: sleeping better. I’m a visual neuroscientist by training, so whenever the topic pops up it inevitably leads to talking about the dreaded blue light from monitors, blue light filters, and whether they do anything.
George R.R. Martin in The Mad King Is Coming:
You’ve been hearing about the great tourney at Harrenhal since A GAME OF THRONES came out in 1996. Now, at long last, we’re going to show it to you… live, on stage, at Stratford-upon-Avon, brought to you by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Never not surprised at the stuff George Martin will do to avoid doing the thing. As quality knows quality (or, so I've heard), procrastination knows procrastination, though, so I'm kinda not really surprised, actually. You know.
I've come to terms with the fact that A Song of Ice and Fire ended with the fifth novel, just as The Kingkiller Chronicle ended with the fifth and Gentlemen Bastard with the third. It's fine. We should just be happy that we got to read these stories at all!
And, in the case of Martin, I'm glad he continues pouring his energy into giving us more great stuff to enjoy. Been watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and I think it's absolutely brilliant.
A survey of 100 commercial foods for dogs and cats revealed that PFAS chemicals appear in numerous brands and types, with fish-based products among those with the highest levels
Colliding galaxies can create a beam of focused microwave radiation known as a maser, and astronomers have discovered the brightest one ever seen
New insights into the causes of migraine are prompting a fresh look at a drug target that was sidelined 25 years ago
These immigration proposals are obscene, but the government can be forced to think again.
These immigration proposals are obscene, but we can force the government to think again.
Rosel George was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 15, 1926. She attended Sophie Newcomb College and earned a Master of Arts degree in Greek at the University of Minnesota. In 1947, she married W.
Planet K2-18b, an apparent water world 124 light years away, has been seen as a promising location in the search for aliens, but telescopes on Earth failed to pick up any radio transmissions
We’ve been missing an important contributor to ageing, says columnist Graham Lawton. Ultra-processed foods are known to be associated with many chronic health problems, but studies have now shown they may also speed up ageing
Been keeping a list of albums I want to add to my music collection. Spent a small fortune (to me) today and splurged on all ten albums that were on the list! Downloading from Qobuz isn't the quickest, so I'm currently waiting for them all to finish downloading like it's 2002.
What a time to be alive!
Think I'll do a small note for each of these albums in the coming weeks. As good a thing to write about as anything else.
Stand on Zanzibar (Del Rey/Ballantine, June 1976). Cover by Murray Tinkelman Watching their sets in a kind of trance Were people in Mexico, people in France. They don’t chase Jones but their dreams are the same— Mr.
