The lines worn into an engraved limestone object from the Netherlands are consistent with the idea that it was a Roman game board, according to an AI analysis
Ripples in space-time from a pair of merging black holes have been recorded in unprecedented detail, enabling physicists to test predictions of general relativity
Scientists have pinpointed a group of bacteria that consistently appear in high numbers in healthy people, suggesting that these could one day be targeted through diet or probiotics
People classed as âoverweightâ according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures of fat, and physicians are finally using them
Seabury Grandin Quinn (1889â1969) is best known to the pulp world today as the author of the occult detective Jules de Grandin. However, he wrote more than just those works. I have posted on a pair of volumes from Black Dog Books that include both his non-series works as well as samples of some of […]
It’s time for an OSNews fundrasier! This time, it’s unplanned due to a financial emergency after our car unexpectedly had to be scrapped (you can find more details below). If you want to support one of the few independent technology news websites left, this is your chance.
About a year ago I mentioned that I had rediscovered the Dillo Web Browser. Unlike some of my other hobbies, endeavours, and interests, my appreciation for Dillo has not wavered. I only have a moment to gush today, so Iâll cut right to it.
KDE’s Nate Graham has published a status update about KDE Linux, the KDE project’s new immutable Linux distribution, intended to be the “KDE OS” showcasing the best of the KDE community.
Cameron Kaiser comes in with another amazing article, this time diving into a unique video titler from Canada, released in 1985. The Super Micro Script was one of several such machines this company made over its lifetime, a stylish self-contained box capable of emitting a 32×16 small or 10×4 large character layer with 64×32 block graphics in eight colours.
A type of cognitive training that tests people's quick recall seems to reduce the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease
Paul ErdĹs was one of the most prolific mathematicians to ever live, known for showing up at the door of others in the field and declaring they should host and feed him while they do maths together. His radical life should be immortalised by Hollywood in a comedy biopic, says columnist Jacob Aron
One type of friction can waste energy even when two perfectly smooth surfaces move against each other, but researchers are getting a handle on how to attenuate or stop it completely
What? It’s been TWO WHOLE WEEKS since I told you what I’ve been thinking about? Well, we certainly can’t have that now, can we? I start with a bit of snark, and finish with a mini-rant.
The first people to reach the Kitsissut Islands off the north-west coast of Greenland were Indigenous peoples, who crossed over 50 kilometres of treacherous water
Adam in Setting up an IRC server / a Neatnik Guide:
You donât need Discord for plain text chat. IRC gets the job done just fine, costs less than a âserver boostâ to run, and puts you firmly in the driverâs seat (especially where privacy is concerned). And you also get to run a real server, not whatever it is that Discord considers a âserverâ, which is definitely not a server.
Great guide from Adam on how to set up an IRC server. I love IRC. I think I might set up a general chat server at some point, share the details here and see if someone pops up.
More people should.
If you use an Apple silicon Mac Iâm sure you have been impressed by its performance. Whether youâre working with images, audio, video or building software, weâve enjoyed a new turn of speed since the M1 on day 1.
We talked about Nemin’s first impressions of the Guix System as someone coming from a Nix environment, but today they’ve got a follow-up article diving into the experience of creating new packages for Guix.
“I’ve been away from Sati-Baa for ten years,” Omari said. “I’ve walked every inch of Ki Khanga and never truly felt at home. Now I have the means not only to return but establish something of my own.
There are many fantasy role playing games (RPGs) available but Iâve hardly played any. Dungeons & Dragons is the best known. I had a couple High School friends who read fantasy and probably would have played D&D with me.
The way I see it, few parts of American life are as quintessentially American
as buying gas. We love our cars, we love our oil, and an industry about as old
as automobiles themselves has developed a highly consistent, fully automated,
and fairly user friendly system for filling the former with the latter.
I grew up in Oregon.
It was only a matter of time before the illegal, erratic, inhumane, and cruel behaviours and policies of the second Trump regime were going to affect the open source world in a possibly very visible way.
As you will see, my choices are on the whole rather fluffy, but these are the films that I return to time and time again for comfort, or as a way to reset my brain. Iâd be very interested to find out if any of my favorites align with any of your own â please let me know in the comments below! Without further ado, in no particular order, and no ratings (because they are all 10s), letâs get cracking!...
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âAs part of our efforts to use more sovereign digital solutions, the European Commission is preparing an internal communication solution based on the Matrix protocol,â the spokesperson told Euractiv. Matrix is an open source, community-developed messaging protocol shepherded by a non-profit thatâs headquartered in London.
What does it look like when a hardware and software company descends into an obsession with recurring services revenue to please its shareholders? Look no further than Apple, who has turned its Apple News service into a vehicle for scam ads.
The flow of ice at Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica has sped up dramatically due to the disintegration of the ice shelf in front of it, and this could lead to faster sea level rise
Science funding cuts in the UK are expected to be a "devastasting blow" for physics research, affecting international projects such as particle detection experiments at CERN
Have you ever looked at something too long and felt like you were sort of seeing through it? Has anybody actually looked at a company this much in a way that wasn’t some sort of obsequious profile of a person who worked there? I don’t mean
When we exercise more, our bodies may compensate by using less energy for other things â especially if we eat less too
Five volcanoes on Jupiterâs moon Io erupted simultaneously, spewing a mind-boggling amount of lava onto the surface and giving us clues to what may lie underneath
Where is the competent boring government we were promised?
Where is the competent boring government we were promised?
Doris Piserchia was born Doris Summers on October 11, 1928 in Fairmont, West Virginia. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Fairmont State College in 1950. Although her family expected her to go into teaching, Piserchia had no interested in teaching an instead, after graduation, she served in the United States Navy until 1954, achieving the rank of Lieutenant.
By matching uterine contractions up with the bodyâs natural circadian rhythms, inducing labour in the early morning is linked to shorter labour and fewer emergency C-sections
A review of the evidence suggests that statins are no more likely than a placebo to cause most of the side effects listed on their labels
I nominate this for the “Most Expected News Of The Decade” award. Today, The Tech Oversight Project published a new report spotlighting newly unsealed documents in the 2026 social media addiction trials.
An otherworldly coral, a very cute moth and an intricately beautiful mushroom are among the winners in the prize this year
Pesticides are becoming more toxic and just about every country is using more of them year after year, despite a UN target to halve the overall risk by 2030
A change in atmospheric chemistry during the covid pandemic resulted in methane concentrations spiking, raising concerns that cleaning up pollution could have similar knock-on effects in the future
Kanzi, a bonobo with exceptional language skills, took part in a make-believe tea party that demonstrated cognitive abilities never seen before in non-human primates
An experiment with superconducting qubits opens the door to determining whether quantum devices could be less energetically costly if they are powered by quantum batteries
The Expiry of this Nuclear Arms Control Pact Is a Loss for the World, America, and Me
Two-year-olds raised in vegan or vegetarian households don't necessarily have restricted growth, according to a study of 1.2 million children
The Weigher (Baen Books, November 1992). Cover by C. W. Kelly First contact stories are one of science fiction’s major subgenres, an important branch of stories about aliens, going back at least to H.
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.
It's been hectic lately. Once things settle down a bit, I think I'm ready.
Going to give Asahi Linux a go.
Today I came across a post in my feed reader. From a blog that I've enjoyed reading for a long time. It's been raw, personal and distinctly human.
Imagine my surprise then, this afternoon when I opened the new post only to be greeted by the classic "Here's why XYZ makes sense" followed by a generic boilerplate list of bullet point that doesn't really say anything at all.
When a real human being I've connected to on some level resorts to using AI to generate posts for their website, I feel conned. A dupe that's fallen for a classic bait and switch. And, look, I get why some people might want to use AI to assist in creating content. But when I follow a personal blog, I want to read things actually written by that person. I want a glimpse into the mind and existence of another human being. My quota of AI generated marketing slop gets filled elsewhere.
After I wrote What we make, I came across a new post on Brandon Sanderson's blog. It's a transcript (it would be a great plot twist if the transcript was AI generated) from a talk Sanderson gave called "The Hidden Cost of AI Art". He tackles the subject far better than I ever could, and the talk is worth watching or reading.
I've only read the transcript.
The following part captures the essence of why using AI for creating quote-unquote art is entirely pointless (emphasis mine):
âŚthe books arenât the product. They arenât the art--not completely. And this is the point. The most important thing to understand is that the process of creating art makes art of you.
My friends, let me repeat that. The book, the painting, the film script is not the only art. Itâs important, but in a way itâs a receipt. Itâs a diploma. The book you write, the painting you create, the music you compose is important and artistic, but itâs also a mark of proof that you have done the work to learn.
Because in the end of it all, you are the art.
The most important change made by an artistic endeavor is the change it makes in you. The most important emotions are the ones you feel when writing that story and holding the completed work. I donât care if the AI can create something that is better than what we can create, because it cannot be changed by that creation.
Many thanks to Brandon for penning these words. Now I have something to refer to when I want to express my view on why AI created blog posts are pointless.
Around the same time, Alberto Galaco published the post What happens when everything is perfect? pontificating some of the same issues. Alberto writes:
That friction between wanting to make something and actually making it used to matter. It was part of learning. Part of ownership. You struggled, failed, tried again, and through that process the idea became yours. When creation becomes instant and disposable, what remains of that bond? What does it even mean to make something anymore?
You should read the full post. I agree with every point Alberto's making. It is clear that this is something that occupies the mind of many smart and competent people, myself notwithstanding. Whatever the eventual outcome of this struggle between man and machine, I hope to see more human written posts in my feed reader in the future.
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
The late photographer's work depicting some of the world's coldest places is collected in his new book Genesis
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
As Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth talk about wanting to make Star Trek real, long-time fan Chanda Prescod-Weinstein says they've misconstrued the heart of the story
The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
Nearly 40 years after Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Sarah Alam Malik's epic exploration of the cosmos reflects a changed landscape around science in the 21st century, finds Alison Flood
In The Beauty, mysterious deaths of models are linked to a new drug and a sexually transmitted infection, both of which kill as they beautify. But if you want great body horror, this isn't the place to look, concludes Bethan Ackerley
It's a truism that weeds love poor soil, but is there anything to it? And what is a weed, anyway? James Wong investigates
Companies are happy to sell you personalised tracking of your biomarkers or a tailored nutrition plan, but truly personalised medicine should be able to tackle the vast differences some people have in response to the same diseases
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
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 wasnât 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 â 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 Iâve 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 itâs 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 weâre 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 Hutchisonâs 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
Iâm 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
