Andy Burnham is now certain to be the next prime minister
Five years after releasing the Amiga 1000, Commodore was about to launch the Amiga 3000, their first real high-end Amiga. With a 68030 processor, on-board SCSI and a slightly updated graphics chipset, all in a sleek desktop case, the Amiga was truly ready for the era of professional 32-bit computing.
Palaeontologists have found new evidence that the early ancestors of amphibians, reptiles and mammals did not have a larval stage with external gills like modern frogs or salamanders
An extremely unusual tectonic movement took place 15 minutes after the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, causing almost the whole of Japan to move 5 millimetres to the east
Ever hear of the legend of Top Shelf Books? Gene Wolfe did! I first heard about the legendary Top Shelf Books from four people who had frequented that mythical venue. However, they were not together when they mentioned the place, and the interval between tellings was years and across many locations.
Beautifully written, this guide to distinguishing between truth, misinformation and lies, first published in 1995, remains an essential read for anyone who considers themselves a critical thinker, says Leah Crane
As the sun expands over the coming billions of years, Earth will become inhospitable to any life more complex than a microbe – but that might take longer than we thought
Oracle is sticking to its promise of more regular Solaris updates with the release of Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU93. This release, like other SRU releases, is for paying Solaris customers, as the CBE releases for enthusiasts are on a different cadence.
Archaeologists have discovered traces of a wooden structure built 5000 years ago, 5 kilometres from Stonehenge, which appears to have been an even older monument for marking the summer solstice
Archaeologists have discovered traces of a wooden structure built 5000 years ago, 5 kilometres from Stonehenge, which appears to have been an even older monument for marking the summer solstice
We already know the vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, greatly reduces infections and cases of cervical cancer, and now we have the first evidence it prevents deaths too
We already know the vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, greatly reduces infections and cases of cervical cancer, and now we have the first evidence it prevents deaths too
Yesterday, Google released Android 17 to Pixel devices, so late last night I updated my Pixel 10 Pro with the intent to write a news item about the release today. The reality is that that I totally forgot I even upgraded last night, because Android 17 is about the biggest nothingburger I’ve ever seen.
The Ace Flandry editions by Poul Anderson: Ensign Flandry, Agent of the Terran Empire, and Flandry of Terra (Ace Books, February 1979, January 1980, July 1979). Covers by Michael Whelan Read Part One of this article here.
Putting brain cells into a hibernation-like state via drugs that cool down core body temperature may help to preserve them following a stroke
Feedback is delighted to explore research digging into the relationship between a reptile's body mass and the length of its Wikipedia entry – but would like to throw Godzilla into the mix
Sarah O'Connor's We Are Not Machines explores how we are contorting ourselves to fit AI into our working lives – and what to do about it, finds Tom Knowles
DNA evidence shows that plague bacteria devastated a community in Siberia more than 5000 years ago, challenging the idea that there were no major disease outbreaks before the advent of farming and large settlements
Bird-mounted headsets and backpacks have revealed the surprising things pigeons do with their eyes when on the wing
By the time we’re born, our brains have all the hardware in place to form thoughts, and possibly even some conscious awareness
A study of 140,000 people suggests that a broadening of the diagnostic criteria for autism and ADHD explains the sharp rise in diagnoses, but that doesn't mean too many people are being told they are autistic or have ADHD
I have posted before on William Preston’s series of stories featuring his pastiche/homage to Doc Savage: The Old Man. This series is made up of five short stories that appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction from 2010 to 2024.
What does it say, how will it work, and what happens next?
This week we kick off an occasional new series of reviews of the Parker crime novels by Richard Stark. If you know Parker, you understand. If you aren’t familiar with him, trust me: You are in for a treat.
The KDE team released KDE Plasma 6.7 today, and with it comes a long list of improvements, new features, bug fixes, new old themes, and so much more. A new feature that is sure to please those among us who use virtual desktops: you can now have different virtual desktop setups per display.
A week or so ago, Apple announced a bunch of features for the App Store on iOS, including personalised recommendations based on your activity and usage of iOS. It turns out this includes a keylogger (taplogger?) in the App Store, which records every single tap you make, every single letter you enter, and a lot of other information.
Neurologist Emily Rogalski studies "superagers" – people in their 80s or 90s with unusually keen memories, whose lifestyles suggest ways to slow cognitive decline
Defying the laws of thermodynamics, experiments are beginning to show that a quantum state that is frozen forever might not be impossible. If we can tame it, it could unlock whole new types of matter
Another story from the good old days from Raymond Chen. During an exchange of war stories, a colleague of mine told one from back in the days when Windows included a processor emulator for x86-32 on systems that natively ran some other processor.
Speaking of FreeBSD, the project released version 15.1 of their operating system today. As it’s a point release, it’s not full of massive changes, but it still brings the LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers up to Linux 7.0, support for the C23 version of the C has progressed considerably, Unicode has bene updated to version 17.0.0 and CLDR 48, and more.
It all started a few weeks ago when I noticed an unexpected spike in the number of pages that could not be found on my website. For a few days I let it ride in the hope that it would resolve itself.
Expect to see more and more articles like this one, as more and more people discover that FreeBSD’s desktop/laptop support keeps improving rapidly. FreeBSD 15 really feels like a breakthrough release.
Hemiscyllium dudgeonae is the tenth recorded species of walking shark, which use their pectoral fins to move across reef flats, and its limited range means it may be at high risk of extinction
Evidence is mounting that there are distinct subtypes of autism, and now, scientists have found that the condition can vary according to the strength of people's brain connections
Disappearing sea ice is letting more sunlight in the Arctic Ocean and boosting phytoplankton growth, but this has depleted a crucial nutrient, which could severely affect animals higher up the food chain
Inspired by Ariel Waldman’s docuseries Life Unearthed, columnist Annalee Newitz explores how microscopes, drones and specialised cameras are giving us an unprecedented view of nature from many different vantage points
Soundtrack: In Flames - Colony
To further support my independent journalism, please subscribe to my premium newsletter.
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...
Read More Read More
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
So-called indirect greenhouse gases, including carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds, aren’t covered by climate policies even though they heat the planet
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
