Soundtrack: In Flames - Colony
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It’s been a while since we’ve had a new operating system project written in Rust, so let’s look at Zinnia. The kernel is written in (almost) 100% Rust and attempts to avoid unsafe code where possible.
If you liked this piece, you should subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter that’s usually anywhere from 5,000 to 18,000 words, including vast, detailed analyses of NVIDIA, Anthropic and
We’re a little deep into June already, but it’s only now that Haiku published its monthly progress report for May. There’s a bunch of fixes for drag-and-drop behaviour in Tracker, AVX512 support can now be enabled thanks to changes to the kernel’s FPU handling, some low-level changes were made for the Rust and Zig compilers, and further improvements were made to the boot process on the Raspberry Pi 5 (although a lot more work is needed on that front).
Tribblix, the Illumos distribution focused on giving you a classic UNIX-style experience, has been updated with the release of Milestone 40. This version has some major component updates. Perl in now 5.42 instead of 5.34, and the default Python is now 3.13.
The surprising discovery of mysterious blobs inside our cells is revolutionising our understanding of how life works, and how it got started
IVF could be done inside the body using sperm that have been magnetised, allowing them to be directed to an egg while getting around the need for invasive egg retrievals and embryo transfers
Scientists have long grappled with how to measure the effect of social media on children. Now, the UK government has announced a total ban for everyone under 16, and researchers are rushing to design rigorous studies before it comes into effect
Physical Intelligence is drawing on the broad knowledge of large language models to help robots understand instructions and learn to carry out any task independently
An infuriating story about something most of us don’t really stop to think about: e-books and the rendering engines companies and software use to display them. It’s the year 2026. Thanks to the horrendous RMSDK which Kobo decided to use as their backbone for all book rendering (probably for DRM reasons), a single line of perfectly valid CSS turns a perfectly valid EPUB file into a “corrupted file” on Kobo and just drops the whole book.
Quantum computing firm QuEra says it plans to make a fault-tolerant quantum computer and offer it to users through the cloud in 2028, which will require a real leap in engineering
Recently, Bold Venture Press put out David Goudsward’s work Adventurous Liberation: H.P. Lovecraft in Florida, which focuses on the several trips of H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) to Florida. I have been looking forward to this work since it was mentioned in L’Affaire Barlow.
The closest you'll get to a World Cup posting from me
How far can you get, application development-wise, by using only the original APIs from Windows 1.0, and only whatever came included by default with Windows 1.0? I finally decided to write an application for the very first version of Windows and see how different the modern WinAPI really is from its earliest versions.
“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” — Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep I don’t think I’ve done a Ten Things I Think I Think, for A (Black) Gat in the Hand.
Galaxies and their supermassive black holes evolve together, but which came first is an ongoing question. Now we may finally have an answer, says columnist Leah Crane
The referendum created a new tribal divide which lasts to this day, and demands more loyalty than people's commitment to a party.
As a teenager reading SF and Fantasy, I had two go-to authors whose work never let me down. One was Andre Norton, who I’ve talked about a lot. The other was Poul Anderson (1926-2001), who I’ve barely mentioned so far.
In 1994 I got my first computer: an Intel i486 DX2-66 with 4 MB RAM and a 512MB harddisk. The software was IBMs OS/2 and Microsofts Windows 3.11. In the next four years I was upgrading this machine every few months with more RAM (up to 16MB), a CD-ROM-drive and a soundblaster card.
TrueType is a widely used vector font standard for rendering text in web pages, PDFs, operating systems, and applications. Familiar fonts like Helvetica, Garamond, and Monaco are all built on TrueType outlines.
Through decades of consolidation, reorganization, and divestiture, AT&T left
a famously complicated corporate history. One of the greatest enterprises in
American history, arguably the greatest enterprise, AT&T has often
rivaled the federal government in the size of its budget and workforce.
Has any writer of science fiction or fantasy ever had a more fertile imagination than Edgar Rice Burroughs? Anyone acquainted with his work will have no trouble reeling off the names of exotic and outlandish planets, continents, oceans, cities, animals, plants, races, gods, kings, princesses, heroes, and villains, ad infinitum. Perhaps his most fecund setting was the first one he created — Barsoom (or Mars, as it’s even now called by the unenlightened), the site of eleven books written between...
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This spring, the stalemate on the battlefield has shifted in Ukraine's favor, complementing other Ukrainian victories in the war.
Friends, I believe we’re approaching the end of this era. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed the paperwork to go public, starting a race for exit liquidity for two companies that burn billions of dollars a year and have no path to profitability.
Both of these companies are
We know that members of Gen Z are less likely to be in a steady relationship than millennials were at their age, but previous research missed out an important factor that actually widens the relationship recession
We can no longer ignore the growing threat of fully autonomous weapons. The world must either act to ban them or accept that they are the future of war
If you want to try out a modern Amiga operating system, your choices are severely constrained. Both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 need PowerPC hardware, and at the moment, there’s little to no modern hardware available for purchase to run these operating systems on.
From riots in Belfast to invasions from Moscow, the UK is failing. It cannot prepare for conflict or protect its citizens.
A superconducting quantum computer is part of a network that is mining an experimental cryptocurrency called Quip, and it is able to do it faster and with better energy efficiency than conventional machines
From riots in Belfast to threats from Moscow, the UK is failing. It cannot prepare for conflict or protect its citizens.
Thomas L. Sherred was born on August 27, 1915 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He wrote as T.L. Sherred. Sherred had a limited career as a science fiction author, publishing his first short story in 1947 with additional stories appearing in 1953, 1954, and 1972, for a total of six stories, four of which were collected in the 1972 collection First Person, Peculiar.
In the face of loneliness, many people are turning to AI chatbots for companionship – but research shows it can’t replace human connection. Columnist David Robson explores how beneficial it can be to talk to strangers, with evidence-based tips on how to get the conversation flowing
A clock based on radioactive thorium atoms realises a long-held ambition, demonstrating a technology that could eventually beat the accuracy of today’s best atomic clocks
The Pride of Chanur (DAW Books, January 1982). Cover by Michael Whelan C.J. Cherryh has just lately announced the end of her writing career: For medical reasons, she can no longer manage a writing project.
Andrew Singleton in AI Economics for Dummies at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:
Benjamin owns a farm. He employs 100 workers plowing his fields. His total payroll is $10 million/year. One day, he buys a mule, which provides the worker who uses it with a modest 10 percent productivity gain. Benjamin fires 99 of his workers and purchases 99 mules, expecting a 1,000 percent productivity gain. The driverless mules cause plow damage to his property in excess of $50 million. Benjamin loses another $5 million due to the loss of productivity from his one reMayning employee, who no longer guides a plow but instead spends 100 percent of his time shoveling mule shit. Goldman Sachs builds an altar to Benjamin in their lobby and cuts out the heart of a junior analyst on it every Friday. They call it “Blood Sacrifice Friday.” The name isn’t catchy, but the event becomes a management favorite nonetheless.
I try to keep it light on the AI stuff these days, because oh my god it is everywhere and it bores me to death, but this it too good.
Via.
Our soils are teeming with networks of fungi, and we're starting to understand how important they are
It was widely thought that the movement of water through Venus flytrap cells caused the trap to close, but detailed experiments have led scientists to propose an alternative mechanism
Global weather agencies have declared that El Niño has begun, and models show it is more likely than not to be a "super" El Niño. The climate pattern boosts extreme weather around the world, and could lead to record temperatures
Video game consoles have a long history with web browsers. From the advent of the World Wide Web, consoles have been trying to get online. Browsers on video game consoles were initially very much an attempt to provide a cheap gateway to the web for a casual audience lacking technical expertise, though as time progressed they’ve become a greater and more integrated part of systems.
An experiment with a toy universe made up of extremely cold atoms shows how time can emerge from quantum interactions, instead of existing by default
With the announcement of an upcoming new macOS release also come the usual changes in which Macs will still be supported. MacOS 27 Golden Gate is an important release in this regard, as it will be the first release of Apple’s desktop operating system that will be entirely ARM-only, dropping support for all Intel Macs.
Student Gunnar Hartmann wins Nature’s 2026 Scientist at Work photography competition for this shot of migrating northern bald ibis in Spain
With Steven Spielberg’s new extraterrestrial film Disclosure Day just out, it’s the ideal time to watch Close Encounter of the Third Kind – perhaps the perfect UFO film, says film columnist Bethan Ackerley
A study of 4.5 million people suggests that ex-smokers who take up vaping are more at risk of dying from lung cancer than people who quit without the use of e-cigarettes
A study of 4.5 million people suggests that ex-smokers who take up vaping are more at risk of dying from lung cancer than people who quit without the use of e-cigarettes
Once more I can't believe another year has passed.
I feel like the speed of time has increased tenfold. It was only just yesterday that I sat down with little time to spare to collect my thoughts about what should've been your eight birthday? Yet, here we are, on the day that you should have turned nine.
Your little brother and little sister and growing up so fast. Too fast. Every day they are out and about, attending one thing or another. He plays football, handball and gymnastics. She takes dance and ballet classes, and gymnastics too, of course. I do the best I can to help them navigate everything. As does your mother. Sometimes I feel like it's my responsibility to help them find their calling in life, and master it. But I know that the best I can do is be their number one fan in whatever they are doing. So I try to limit my role to that. And the driving to and driving from. And packing bags, filling bottles, buying shoes, making sure nobody forgets their hairbands (I really need to learn how to braid hair, I'm sure if you were here I'd know it already) and a hundred other little things.
That's life right now. It passes at a hundred kilometres per hour. Not so much because I am so busy, I think, but because I am enjoying every moment of it. Even if it is hard sometimes, watching them grow, physically, mentally and socially, into something resembling complete human beings is more rewarding than anything else I have ever experienced. By an infinite margin.
Thinking about how you should have been even further down the line makes me sad. Angry, too. What would you have liked, I wonder? Would you have been a sports girl, like your brother, or musical dance girl, like your sister? Who of the kids I that would have been your classmates would have been your friends? I wondered that as we all went to an end of the school year party at the school tonight, and I saw your class perform a dance.
The weather was great. I overdressed, and felt a little scorched. Your sister did, too. We didn't have time for our usual celebration of your birthday on account of the school party. It made me feel a little guilty. But your sister and I visited your grave and lit a candle. We'll do the other rituals this weekend instead.
I know you won't mind.
Miss you.
Apple recently announced its next crack at integrating “AI” into its operating systems, this time opting to simply whitelabel Google’s Gemini “AI” tools instead of developing its own LLM technology.
For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions.
In a Lonely Place (Warner Books, March 1983). Cover by Barclay Shaw Read Part One of this article, focused chiefly on Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane tales, here. Karl Edward Wagner and I shared certain similarities, which I’m sure meant nothing to him but which do mean something to me.
On a related note, what about a raycasting first-person shooter written in… COBOL? Can you think of a better programming language than COBOL to implement an FPS from scratch? I know I can’t, so buckle up and enjoy what can only be described as an out-of-body experience for COBOL enthusiasts as I set out to make a Wolfenstein3D-like raycasting based FPS game (and potentially go a bit further than that, hopefully it’s not a DOOMed attempt).
My goal was to build a complete, shippable first-person shooter using techniques that were common in the early 90s, while allowing myself the luxury of using a modern compiler and a platform abstraction layer.
Microsoft has detailed that Windows 11 is going to switch away from dedicated printer drivers to its Windows Ready Print system. This should make it a lot easier and less cumbersome to get printers running on Windows 11.
A visit to Kew Gardens’ exhibit of the sculptor’s work is a fascinating insight into how he was inspired by nature
Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte's The Story of Birds offers an excellent and sometimes startling account of bird evolution, finds Michael Marshall
Feedback is alarmed by a study that explored how funny people think they are, and discovered certain traits in those who rate themselves the most humorous
A photo essay from Tommy Trenchard explores efforts to protect the fragile ecosystems of oases in Chad
With its origins in a creepy image posted on 4chan, Backrooms is an unusually potent big-screen experiment in fear and perception, says Davide Abbatescianni
Researchers suggesting that the keto diet could treat mental health conditions find themselves uncomfortably aligned with people like vaccine-sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr, but that is not a reason to reject the idea
Has Russia missed its chance of victory in Ukraine?
Europe’s largest land animal, the bison, is thought to be relatively unthreatened by predators, but footage from Białowieża Primaeval Forest in Poland shows it does face attacks from wolves
Researchers diving 7 kilometres deep in a crewed submersible have discovered a vast collection of whale bones, including fossils up to 5 million years old and species new to science
The outer solar system once seemed like a quiet backwater. But a glut of tiny, strange moons with unruly orbits are coming into view, revealing hints of a surprising past – and the origin of Saturn's rings
It’s just a ruling from a lower court, but it sets the stage for how European courts are going to deal with the question of who is liable for whatever slop “AI” generates. The Regional Court of Munich hit Google with a temporary injunction barring the company from spreading false claims about two Munich-based publishers through its AI-generated search overviews (case no.
Climate models suggest a small nuclear war in the tropics would do even more damage to the ozone layer than a larger nuclear war in more northerly latitudes, increasing exposure to dangerous ultraviolet radiation all over the world
When it comes to 80s computer brands, few flew as high as Eagle Computer flew in 1983. The aptly named company was selling 12,000 computers a month and had been doubling sales every quarter under the leadership of a talented CEO.
Paperback Fantastic is a three-book series by Justin Marriott, creator of the fanzine Paperback Fanatic, which came out in 2022. Bill Cunningham of Pulp 2.0 did the covers. Each of the three volumes focuses on paperbacks and comic books tied to the theme, and many of the paperbacks reprint pulp fiction, hence their inclusion here.
⏱️ 04:06 total (1:45 actual) ⇄28.5km ⌀16.1km/h ↗89m ↘?m
Good ride yesterday, to deliver some seedlings I have been growing to a friend who lives under the Fiumicino take-off flight path, just across from the excellent cycle path.
A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties
A near miss with a Waymo while cycling through London hasn't changed my optimistic stance on driverless cars, but we can't ever let our guard down, says Matthew Sparkes
Uncrewed ground vehicles have already been tested for defending the front line by the Ukrainian military. Despite their limitations, these remotely controlled robots could be the deciding factor in many conflicts
Scrape marks inside a skull and sharpened limb bones in a set of remains found in Scotland may be evidence of unusual Iron Age funerary rituals
A new logo means new merch! I’m launching brand new merch today, all featuring the brand new OSNews logo. We’ve got the classic T-shirt with the new OSNews logo, in sandy white and terrain grey.
A complex ecosystem of woolly mammoths, bison, horses and big cats has been elucidated by studying the faeces of small rodents that probably ate the bigger animals
Bleaching has devastated reefs around the world, raising fears of an irreversible shift. Yet new interventions have revealed that corals can be remarkably resilient if we can give them enough help to recover
Drill cores at the impact site of the Chicxulub asteroid show evidence that, alongside widespread destruction, the collision created a vast underground ecosystem filled with hot water that sheltered microbial life
Brown dwarfs are somewhere between the size of a planet and a star, so how could we have potentially mistaken two of them for distant galaxies? Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein argues that solving this cosmic mix-up is particularly possible now, as galaxy research has never been stronger
Physics is considered a cold, hard science – but it will transform your life if you view it with a bit more subjectivity, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
Goodafterevenmorn, Readers! I’m still in the world of video games. I’d rather not be. I’m gearing up for a book release right now. I’d much rather be talking about that. But the gaming news is slamming itself into my algorithm at the moment, and I need to talk about it.
In today’s climate, I needed this: GentleOS, an operating system targeting both 386 (GentleOS/32) and even processors as old as the 80186 (GentleOS/16), with a lovely retro graphical user interface, usable on bare metal, and, of course, open source.
Apple’s developer conference started today, and as is tradition, this means it also announced coming updates to its operating systems lineup. macOS is probably one of the two major ones OSNews readers are interested in, so let’s start there: Much like Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009, Apple said it focused on improving macOS’s performance and dozens of underlying technologies this year.
Anthropic has warned that recursive-self-improving AI could be on the horizon, but the truth is the company is more immediately concerned with marketing itself for a blockbuster initial public offering on the stock market, says Matthew Sparkes
The out-of-Africa migration, in which ancient humans went on to inhabit every other continent except Antarctica, may not have been one moment in time, but a long and slow process. Columnist Michael Marshall examines how archaeologists are rethinking this critical part of our history
Lapses in memory are a normal part of ageing but can also be signs of dementia. Here’s how to distinguish between typical brain ageing and cognitive decline
A diverse range of bird species has been recorded at a solar park on rewetted peatland in Germany, suggesting that combining energy generation with habitat restoration could benefit biodiversity, the climate and the economy
Redox progressed another month, and that means a ton of improvements and new features to talk about. The biggest news this past month is that Xfce has been ported to Redox, which offers a better X11 experience than MATE currently does.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned tech firms, including Apple and Google, that they must voluntarily implement tools to stop children sharing explicit images, but experts warn this is easier said than done
If you liked this piece, you should subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter that’s usually anywhere from 5,000 to 18,000 words, including vast, detailed analyses of NVIDIA, Anthropic and
Each decade the world is losing over 7 per cent of its freshwater storage capacity to sediment build-up, according to an analysis of over half a million reservoirs
Norman Feske, one of the main developers behind Genode and Sculpt OS, has published a blog post detailing how he developed a two-factor authentication application for Sculpt OS. With this little tool, which I have turned into an deploy option on Sculpt OS to swiftly bring it up whenever I need it, TOTP-based two-factor authentication has become part of my daily routine.
One-third of people with anorexia nervosa don’t recover and treatment has remained stagnant for years. Now we’re beginning to understand how the condition takes over the mind
At the end of 2025, we got the second collection of the Lady From Hell series: The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon: The Complete Cases of the Lady From Hell, Vol. 2. This series ran 25 stories, all in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1935 to 1936.
Endometriosis is usually thought of as a gynaecological condition, but a huge study shows it has links with cholesterol levels, inflammation and an altered microbiome
