Gadgets, desk accessories, widgets – whatever you they were called, they were a must-have feature for various operating systems for a while. Windows in particular has tried making them happen six times, and every time, they failed to really catch on and ended up being killed, only for the company to try again a few years later.
Microsoft Research, in collaboration with various others, has just released LiteBox, a library operating system. LiteBox is a sandboxing library OS that drastically cuts down the interface to the host, thereby reducing attack surface.
An antibody that has the power to neutralise any influenza strain could be widely administered in the form of a nasal spray if a flu pandemic emerges
In his lyrical book Frostlines, Neil Shea argues that we are more connected to the Arctic than we might think, says Elle Hunt
Feedback is delighted by an experiment on the Milan metro system, which involved a prosthetic bump, a Batman costume and some unexpected displays of public decency
The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT seemed to induce similar patterns of brain activity in a lama - a revered spiritual teacher in Tibetan Buddhism - as meditation, advancing our understanding of the drug's neurological effects
Some think the rise of C-sections means that one day all births will require serious medical intervention. But a surprising new understanding of the pelvis suggests a different story
An array of 15,000 qubits made from phosphorus and silicon offers an unprecedentedly large platform for simulating quantum materials such as perfect conductors of electricity
Continuing to catch up on my reading of the excellent Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective series from Airship 27, this time I go over volumes 15 to 18, which are the most recent volumes. I had hoped, like my last posting, to do just three collections and a novel, but it wasn’t to be.
A social network where humans are banned and AI models talk openly of world domination has led to claims that the "singularity" has begun, but the truth is that much of the content is written by humans
Chemicals used in refrigeration break down in the atmosphere to produce trifluoroacetic acid, a persistent pollutant that could be harmful to humans and aquatic life
I am gut punched to hear that author James Sallis (December 1944 – January 27, 2026) has died. James was the closest thing to a writing mentor I had. He was a friend, and certainly one of the most talented writers I’ve ever known.
Over the past month or so, several enterprising contributors have taken an interest in the zig libc subproject. The idea here is to incrementally delete redundant code, by providing libc functions as Zig standard library wrappers rather than as vendored C source files.
Rust is everywhere, and it’s no surprise it’s also made its way into the lowest levels of certain operating systems and kernels, so it shouldn’t be surprising that various operating system developers have to field questions and inquiries about Rust.
While pilots are flying in a VR simulation, their brainwave patterns can be fed into an AI model that assesses how challenging they are finding a task and adjusts the difficulty accordingly
Can a single particle have a temperature? It may seem impossible with our standard understanding of temperature, but columnist Jacklin Kwan finds that it’s not exactly ruled out in the quantum realm
Iranians want a deal on democracy, not a deal on nuclear weapons. We should too.
John Martinis has already revolutionised quantum computing twice. Now, he is working on another radical rethink of the technology that could deliver machines with unrivalled capabilities
SpaceX says it wants to deploy an astronomical number of data centres in orbit to supply power for artificial intelligence, but the proposal might not be entirely serious
The meaning of life has puzzled philosophers for millennia, but new research suggests it could be as simple as lending a helping hand
Good afterevenmorn, Readers! I took myself on a date Thursday night. It was very romantic. I first went to a bookshop to pick up a new book for myself (this was because I had forgotten to take my book with me, and could not spend the evening passing time without a book.
We recently talked about Apple’s pre-Mac OS X dabblings in UNIX, but Apple wasn’t the only computer and operating system company exploring UNIX alternatives. Microsoft had the rather successful Xenix, Atari had ASV, Sony had NEWS, to name just a very small few.
After a seemingly endless stream of tone deaf news from Mozilla, we’ve finally got some good news for Firefox users. As the company’s been hinting at for a while on social media now, they’ve added an “AI” kill switch to the latest Firefox nightly release, as well as a set of toggles to disable specific “AI” features.
In the late 1980s, with the expansion of the Internet (even though it was not open to commercial activities yet) and the slowly increasing capabilities of workstations, some people started to imagine the unthinkable: that, some day, you may use your computer to record voice messages, send them over the Internet, and the recipient could listen to these messages on his own computer.
Ants rely on scent to recognise their comrades, and when they are exposed to common air pollutants, other members of their colony react as if they are enemies
Reviewing January’s projects and publications
For the first time, researchers have found what seems to be a cloud of dark matter about 60 million times the mass of the sun in our galactic neighbourhood
The most robust evidence to date shows that people with a type of lung cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy before 3pm
Your organs are constantly talking to each other in ways we’re only beginning to understand. Tapping into these communication networks is opening up radical new ways to boost health
Steeger Books in the summer of 2025 came out with a new expanded edition of Don Hutchison’s The Great Pulp Heroes (1996, 2007, 2025). This work has long been an excellent introduction and overview of the world of pulp heroes.
We are getting a clearer sense of where and how often Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, and it turns out the behaviour was much more common than we first thought
I’m working on a Douglas Adams post as part of an upcoming recurring feature on his non-fiction quotes. But I got sidetracked reading Calvin and Hobbes this past weekend. Much of America is in a war against brutal weather.
To eliminate bedtime struggles, a growing number of parents have turned to melatonin gummies, but these hormone supplements are largely unregulated. Columnist Alice Klein digs into the evidence on the risks of regularly using melatonin as a sleep aid for children
Gene-editing citrus fruits to make them less bitter could not only encourage more people to eat them, it might also help save the industry from a devastating plague
A series that I wanted but had a difficult time getting was the Berserker series by Chris Carlsen. There are three books, all from Sphere Books, published in 1977, 1977, & 1979 respectively. I finally got the last one and just finished reading it.
Readers are spoiled for choice when it comes to popular science reading this month, with new titles by major names including Maggie Aderin and Michael Pollan
I previously covered x64 OpenVMS release on VMware. This was insanely cool achievement for the operating system. While it had no practical ramification there was one small annoyance. The OS console was on a serial port.
But NixOS isn’t the only declarative distro out there. In fact GNU forked Nix fairly early and made their own spin called Guix, whose big innovation is that, instead of using the unwieldy Nix-language, it uses Scheme.
Josh Tumath in Try text scaling support in Chrome Canary:
Tip 1: Don't override the initial font size
The default font size comes from the initial value of the CSS font-size property. If an author doesn't specify a size, the initial font-size is medium. But what is medium? Typically it's 16px. But on desktop browsers, users can change it to whatever they want.
Came across this about text scaling, which is definitely a much needed feature, via Luke Harris. Josh's post is clear with good advice on how to support text scaling on your website. I have a ways to go, and need to dive into my CSS to fix it.
Ironically, I've only overridden the initial font size on my site here because I find initial font size to be too small!
Following the excellent Starship Troopers feedback last week, here’s a selection that might be a little less controversial. Kidding. The Party (1968) Who’s in it? Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Steve Franken, Denny Miller What’s it about? Hrundi V.
It’s no secret that Windows 11 isn’t exactly well-liked by even most of its users, and I’m fairly sure that perception has permeated into the general public as well. It seems Microsoft is finally getting the message, and they’re clearly spooked: the company has told The Verge that they have heard the complaints, and intend to start fixing many of the issues people are having.
But it’s on a lifeline, becoming less liberal, and will only survive if we work hard to reform and renew it
Columnist Michael Le Page delves into a catalogue of hundreds of potentially beneficial gene mutations and variants that is popular with transhumanists
You can’t avoid Oracle.
No, really, you can’t. Oracle is everywhere. It sells ERP software – enterprise resource planning, which is a rat king of different services for giant companies for financial services, procurement (IE: sourcing and organizing the goods your company needs to run), compliance,
Some people don’t develop dementia despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, and we're starting to understand why
Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire?
Operating systems written in Rust – especially for embedded use – are quite common these days, and today’s example fits right into that trend. Ariel OS is an operating system for secure, memory-safe, low-power Internet of Things (IoT).
Yawning and deep breathing each have different effects on the movement of fluids in the brain, and each of us may have a distinct yawning "signature"
We pick the sci-fi novels we’re most looking forward to reading this month, from a new Brandon Sanderson to the latest from Makana Yamamoto
How one man's career explains our public life.
How one man's career explains British public life.
In the early 1800s, Denmark’s government, medical community, church leaders and school teachers all united to promote the new smallpox vaccine, which led to a remarkably quick elimination of the disease in the capital
Robert Moore Williams was born in Farmington, Missouri on June 19, 1907 and attended the Missouri School of Journalism, from which he graduated in 1931 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. He married Margaret Jelley in 1938 and they had one daughter.
Members of the New Scientist Book Club give their take on Sierra Greer's award-winning science-fiction novel Annie Bot, our read for February – and the needle swings wildly from positive to negative
In this extract from the February read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet the protagonist of Tim Winton’s Juice, driving across a scorched landscape in a future version of Australia
The New Scientist Book Club's February read is Tim Winton's novel Juice, set in a future Australia that is so hot it is almost unliveable. Here, the author lays out his reasons for writing it – and why he doesn't see it as dystopian
Elizabeth Hohmann is very interested in faeces, and spends her days sifting through stools to find those that could make the biggest difference to other people's health
Welcome to more Dark Muse News. This post reviews Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes. It was released in September 2023 (Flame Tree Press, cover illustration by Broci) and is the first book of the series The Making of This World: Ruined.
Borys Kit for the Hollywood Reporter in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, Stormlight Archive to Get Movie, TV Show:
Could the next great fantasy screen franchise be here? Apple TV believes so. The streaming giant has closed what has been described as an unprecedented deal to land the rights to the Cosmere books, the fictional literary universe by fantasy author Brandon Sanderson.
Cannot wait!
Every year I make a family highlights movie. Throughout the calendar year, I try to whip out my camera or, if it is all I have at hand, my phone, to capture a glimpse of something that might be worthy of including.
None of it is anything special. And that is kind of the point. I can't dictate the memories my children retain from the childhood. But, my goal with these videos is to shape them. To reinforce the happy moments we shared as a family. Remind them of how their grandparents — even though they might not see them too often in their day to day lives — were there for every special occasion. Show them that they were happy and active and healthy and loved.
Not rarely I need that reminder myself. In the hubbub of daily life it easy to feel doubt that you're doing enough. Going through a plethora of recorded evidence to the contrary reminds me otherwise.
Making these annual movies is quite an endeavour. Capturing the source material is one thing. Sorting it, deciding what to keep and what to discard as I try to weave a story of the year that passed, is no small task. I am no videographer, no movie director, much as I think myself Wes Anderson's slightly less talented, albeit unappreciated cousin as I'm battling iMovie for the seventh year in a row, trying to remember the key combination for cutting a clip before eventually giving in and looking up the answer. When I'm finally done, I feel relieved.
In this day and age, there are tools out there that could do the job for me. I could just dump the raw footage in a chat and something akin to my yearly movie would pop out after a short while. In all likelihood, the movie it produced would be objectively better than anything I can finagle out of iMovie. Smoother, more polished, with a tailor made soundtrack and so on. Far more impressive.
Sometimes I'm tempted to give it a go. Then I take a step back and ask myself "what would be the point?" and I go back to wrestling with iMovie.
Because I know that the end product, the movie itself, is not the point. Making it is. The magic is in hand-picking the moments that make up our family's highlight reel of the year that came and went. My idiosyncratic use of transitions. The way I abuse iMovie's various title effects to superimpose dry-wit commentary atop most clips. An eclectic soundtrack from my own music library to give my kids little hints of who their father was and what he enjoyed listening to.
All these little things inject a little bit of my humanity into the end product. And that is the point. Not just of these movies, but of anything that you and I and everyone else make. To inject as much humanity as possible into the things we make.
Don't fall for the temptation of using technology to produce something polished, soulless and void of humanity when all that matters is to imprint as much humanity as possible.
As most of you will know, Mac OS X (or Rhapsody if you count the developer releases) wasn’t Apple’s first foray into the world of UNIX. The company sold its own UNIX variant, A/UX, from 1988 to 1995, which combined a System V-based UNIX with a System 7.0.1 desktop environment and application compatibility, before it acquired NeXT and started working on Rhapsody/Mac OS X.
Interval cancers are aggressive tumours that grow during the interval after someone has been screened for cancer and before they are screened again, and AI seems to be able to identify them at an early stage
A reanalysis of twin data from Denmark and Sweden suggests that how long we live now depends roughly equally on the genes we inherit, and on where we live and what we do
Shrinking sea ice has made life harder for polar bears in many parts of the Arctic, but the population in Svalbard seems to be thriving
Adults with kidney cancer who received faecal microbiota transplants on top of their existing drugs did better than those who had placebo transplants as their add-on intervention
Even given a set of possible quantum states for our cosmos, it's impossible for us to determine which one of them is correct
While the two major open source desktop environments get most of the airtime – and for good reason, since they’re both exceptionally good – there’s a long tail of other desktop environments out there catering to all kinds of special workflows and weird niches.
The name John Maddox Roberts (1947 – ) first came to my attention as a writer of Conan sword & sorcery pastiches from Tor. He wrote eight, and when I talk to other REH fans Roberts’ name is almost always listed near the top of the Conan pastiche writers.
I’ve gotten a lot of flack throughout my career over my disdain towards
test-driven development (TDD). I have met a lot of people who swear by it! And,
I have also met a lot of people who insisted that I adopt it, too, often with
the implied threat of appealing to my boss if appealing to me didn’t work.
The basic premise of TDD, for those unaware, is that one first writes a unit
test that verifies the expected behavior for some function they want to write,
observes the new test fail, and then one writes the implementation, iterating
on it until the test passes.
Since I have no qualms about kicking a proprietary software product while it’s down, let’s now switch to NTDEV‘s thoughts on the state of Windows 11. Unfortunately, the issue that plagued Windows since the dawn of time has only aggravated recently.
I’ve been terribly sick for a few days so we’ve got some catching up to. Let’s first take a look at how Windows is doing. People often say Linux is “too much work.” And I agree.
From health tech developers to influencers, our health is being monetised – and we need to be aware of what's going on, says Deborah Cohen
How much do you know about friction? Jennifer R. Vail's charming, if sometimes technical, "biography" of the force showcases its amazing and largely overlooked role in everything from climate change to dark matter, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
Feedback has been informed about a "global telepathy study" which is currently taking place, but isn't entirely convinced about its merits
The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
Susan Wise Bauer's The Great Shadow investigates the effects of illness on individual lives and collective beliefs. It's a mixed bag, says Peter Hoskin
Where is physics headed? No one knows for sure, but Beyond the Quantum by Antony Valentini is a striking new book that reminds us what a big idea really looks like, finds Jon Cartwright
While snakes and ladders is purely a game of chance, there is a way to add some strategy, says mathematician Peter Rowlett
Many countries are debating whether to follow Australia and ban social media for younger teenagers. But with more robust evidence on its harms coming, we shouldn't be too hasty
Discussing the fallout from the U.S. president's reckless Greenland gambit
The ubiquitous Epstein-Barr virus is increasingly being linked to conditions like multiple sclerosis and lupus. But why do only some people who catch it develop these complications? The answer may lie in our genetics
Thousands of years before the invention of compasses or sails, prehistoric peoples crossed oceans to reach remote lands like Malta and Australia. Doing so meant striking out in unknowable conditions. What do such crossings tell us about ancient minds?
A treasure trove of Cambrian fossils has been discovered in southern China, providing a window on marine life shortly after Earth’s first mass extinction event
Right on schedule in September, the fourth Thomas Adam Grey thriller by Duane Laflin, The Deadly Skulls, came out. As I’ve been enjoying this series, I quickly got and read it. This series continues to be great, and I look forward to the next ones.
Clumps of cells known as organoids are helping us to understand the brain, and the latest version comes equipped with realistic blood vessels to help the organoids live longer
Using a superconducting quantum computer, physicists created a large and complex version of an odd quantum material that has a repeating structure in time
It’s still January, which means I haven’t yet abandoned my ambitious New Year’s Resolution to get caught up on my favorite blogs. I started with Rich Horton’s excellent Strange at Ecbatan, and this week I’ve been spending time at Dave Hook’s book blog A Deep Look by Dave Hook.
