A bit more than 103 years ago, the first issue of Weird Tales reached newsstands across North America. The magazine would be published consistently for over three decades, with the title revived sporadically ever since.
As 2025 ended, I thought about the reading I would do in the new year ahead and decided that in 2026, I would place an emphasis on rereading. In fact, I vowed that I wouldn’t read a new book without first rereading an old one.
Apple sued OpenAI on Friday, alleging the AI company has stolen the iPhone maker’s trade secrets to develop its own yet-to-be-unveiled AI gadgets. In the suit, filed in the District Court of Northern California, Apple accuses OpenAI of trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract.
Redox did the develop cools stuff thing again for a month, so we’ve got progress to talk about. This past month, GTK3 has been ported to Redox, as well as the Tcl programming language. Support for per-window fractional scaling has been added to Orbital, Redox’ desktop environment, but it’s still relatively limited for now.
Windows has a fairly complex update ecosystem, so every now and then, the company feels like it needs to publish clarifications and explainers so people can keep up with what’s going on. Most individuals and organizations regularly deploy monthly security updates, released on the second Tuesday of each month.
Hi premium readers! I’ll be taking a week off of the premium next week — July 17 — to have some well-earned rest. This will mark only the second time I’ve missed a premium piece since I started this newsletter in June 2025, and I
The NATO Summit in Ankara this week produced some positive results and avoided a major blow-up between the US and Europe.
A list of global space launches designed to calm cold war tensions and promote transparency has been missing from the UN's website for months
Climate change is already having a big impact on crop yields, and the subsequent financial losses will continue to rise as the world keeps warming
Don't let them tell you it's impossible. It is absolutely 100% achievable.
At an event in London, mathematicians have made unexpectedly fast progress on formalising Fermat's last theorem using AI
Don't let them tell you it's impossible: a guide to surviving journalism in your twenties.
Bert Shurtleff was born on August 3, 1897 to Eugene Kassuth Shurtleff and Hattie Elma (née Cook) in Adamsville, Rhode Island. He was the seventh of ten children. When he was fourteen, he left home to try to support himself, returning to school when he was 18 and attending East Greenwich Academy for High School.
How can you have a proof without proving anything? Mathematicians found a way and, in the process, came to blows over it – but 100 years on, this trick is a common part of modern maths, says columnist Jacob Aron
During the August 2026 solar eclipse, scientists will be rushing to gather data on the sun, but even if you aren't a professional scientist, you can still help the research
Murder Must Advertise (Pocket Books, 1940) Mr. Tallboy’s eyes, roving negligently round, had fallen on Bredon’s index-card… Neatly printed on the card stood one word. DEATH In Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayers takes murder mysteries in another new direction: not, this time, exploring an established subgenre, but hybridizing the mystery genre with what we would now call workplace drama, or sometimes workplace comedy.
A recording from Michael McFaul's live video
An experiment with a charged molecule of bismuth and carbon reveals how effects from Albert Einstein’s special relativity reshape the standard understanding of chemical bonds
Perfusing donor human retinas with blood and oxygen meant they continued to respond to light for up to 10 hours after death, marking a significant step towards eye transplants that restore vision
The laws of physics that concern heat and work could gain a firmer mathematical footing thanks to “gauge theory”, which already helps us understand quantum fields
Egg cells missing a key protein may be more likely to end up with the wrong number of chromosomes, but an mRNA injection that helps the cells make the protein reduces the problem
Fossils of Spriggina floundersi provide the earliest evidence of animals favouring one side of the body over the other – a feature of nervous systems that we see in our own right- and left-handedness
A post-American NATO is no longer a risk, it's the base case.
You all donated en masse to have me use Windows 11 for a month, and so I did. What was it like for a long-time Linux user to go back and experience Windows as it exists now? Is it really as bad as we’ve collectively made it out to be? Did my month with Windows 11 consist of nothing but pain and misery, or are there good things to say, too? Or, was it an unexpected pleasant surprise? And ultimately, did I stay with Windows 11, or move back to the Linux world? ➡️ Donate through Ko-Fi ➡️ Donate through SEPA transfer* ➡️ Buy merch from our store ➡️ Why a fundraiser? *Name: Thom Holwerda – IBAN: SE08 8000 0820 1684 4657 8414 – BIC: SWEDSESS This year, I’m celebrating the milestone of having posted 20000 stories on OSNews during my 21 years as managing editor of OSNews.
With July being Disability Pride Month, GNOME’s Sophie Herold published a blog post taking stock of where GNOME stands on this front, progress that’s been made, as well as areas where the project comes short.
Linux Mint’s Cinnamon is one of the last desktops to still not support Wayland, and is relegated to only being compatible with legacy X11 environments. With the next release of Cinnamon, however, this is finally going to change.
The Sowers of the Thunder, a collection by Robert E. Howard (Zebra Books, March 1975, and Ace Books, July 1979). Covers by Jeff Jones and Esteban Maroto A personal rant this morning on the issue of: Purple Prose.
A modelling study suggests marine cloud brightening could shade the eastern Pacific and reduce a global temperature spike from El Niño, but there could be unexpected consequences
Homer still matters, argues Adam Nicolson in The Mighty Dead, a great primer to Christopher Nolan's new adaptation of the Odyssey, says Kelsey Hayes
Feedback is delighted by a study of how many animals produce poop that echoes the look of the poop emoji – even the lugworm, which does it upside down
The first six months of 2026 have seen bright threads in sci- fi series including Fallout and Paradise. But for pure gold, advises TV columnist Bethan Ackerley, try Star City
From AI with Hannah Fry to David Attenborough's early days, these are the five must-watch science documentaries of the year to date, says Bethan Ackerley
Dads are often overlooked when it comes to parenting science. Darby Saxbe's fascinating new book Dad Brain is out to change that, says Olivia Goldhill
A drug that softens the ovaries helped mice and rats conceive more easily at an older age, and produce more pups
Seeking out the simplest, most elegant explanations has served scientists well for centuries, but cognitive scientist Marina Dubova’s experiments are revealing better ways to uncover reality
The fifth volume of D.C. Jones and Adventure Command International is out, and it gives us a new foe as the timeline moves into 1977, when the original G.I. Joe toys ended, to be replaced with a new group.
Pioneer of quantum mechanics Erwin Schrödinger's look at living organisms is one of the most influential popular-science books of the 20th century. So how does it hold up today, asks Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
Lambs have been born using an experimental form of IVF that coaxes immature eggs to become mature ones. This could boost the number of eggs available for fertilisation and improve IVF success rates
A drug that raises levels of histamine – the chemical that causes allergy symptoms – in the brain boosts our memory by around 10 per cent
A short spell in a heat chamber at the University of Brighton showed Alec Luhn that his body is not adapted to high temperatures – but regular exposure can train the body to respond more effectively
Good afterevenmore, Readers! First, my apologies for getting this to you late, instead of my usual morning post (also, please spare a thought for the editor, whose forbearance is bordering on legendary.
About a month ago, Flathub announced a ban on slopcoded applications. Evangelos “GeopJr” Paterakis, developer of a number of popular Linux applications and ton of other things, did some research into just how many applications tagged with “AI slop”, a tag Flathub reviewers used to keep track of slopcoded applications submitted to Flathub, actually survived the test of time.
Only a few days ago we had Linux on the Mega Drive, and someone took that as a challenge, so now we have Linux on the Atari Jaguar. The Jaguar has a very different architecture than the Mega Drive, but does happen to use a processor from the same 68000-family.
Few people have invented an algorithm with the potential to spark a worldwide crisis, so why is quantum computing pioneer Peter Shor so unconcerned? Karmela Padavic-Callaghan spoke to him to find out
Explaining the passage of time has been a gnarly problem in physics basically forever, but physicist and computer scientist Stephen Wolfram has a radical proposal for where it comes from. He discussed his ideas on time – and what they mean for free will – with reporter Leah Crane
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
Some 40 years ago, physicists noticed certain metals were conducting electricity in a bizarre way no one could explain. New answers to how and why this happens are forcing us to question how electricity flows
This dreary little man wants to use a byelection to exclude himself from scrutiny. It might not go as well as he thinks.
Today, most rechargeable batteries are made from lithium ions, but sodium-ion alternatives could make battery tech much cheaper and offer other advantages
As Chris Packham gears up for his new TV show, Evolution, he tells Penny Sarchet why understanding the latest evolutionary science is so important if we are to truly appreciate the natural world - and how he would happily die at the hands of a Tyrannosaurus rex
Longer-lasting hot spells and high temperatures at night are making it harder to cope, leading to thousands more deaths from extreme heat
We used to think post-menopausal ovaries sat inert in the body, but evidence from mice suggests they may instead turn into an organ with a role in inflammation
A series of experiments shows that bees respond differently to tastes depending on their internal states, hinting that they have something akin to our emotions
A cave on the Turkish Mediterranean coast was inhabited first by Neanderthals and then Homo sapiens, but the continuity of tools and personal objects suggests there was some sharing of culture between the two species
Donald Trump embraced autocrats. Now his allies are tired of it.
In our efforts to keep our brains healthy, how do we know what is working? Helen Thomson explores a new generation of tests that can reveal whether our efforts are paying off
How much sunscreen should you be using, when should you apply it, and are there any downsides to doing so? Skin cancer expert Rachel Neale is here to answer all of these questions and more
Dr. Skull is a serialized thriller from Lewis Clay that ran in 10 issues of Detective Fiction Weekly from Sept. 17, 1938, through Nov. 11, 1938. It was cover-featured with the first installment, and this cover is used by Steeger Books for this addition to its Argosy Library.
A TED talk and then a film, William Kamkwamba’s story of how he worked to provide his rural Malawian village with electricity has now been turned into a musical – and it mostly works, says Bethan Ackerley
The fate of the Atlantic Ocean current that keeps Europe’s climate warm depends on our carbon emissions and the rate of ice melt from Greenland, but there is a chance that a shutdown is already inevitable
“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 (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun.
Our brains are large compared with other animals, so it is tempting to assume there was an evolutionary advantage to them – but that may not be true at all
Some marathon runners and other athletes swear by beetroot juice shots, but is there evidence they really do anything for our bodies? Columnist Alice Klein investigates
AI companies are hiring philosophy graduates to help them understand the nature of consciousness, whether it can be replicated and how their systems can be made better and more reliable
Wherever in the world you go, the smartphone landscape is dominated by Android and iOS, and while this has always been problematic, recent events have made the dependency on two American tech giants for what is probably our most personal computing device even more problematic than it already was.
Colour me positively surprised, as I had no idea Alpha emulation had progressed this much. As you might know, I’m involved a bit in the OpenVMS community and the Alpha emulation side via AXPBox. AXPBox (github) is a fork of the es40 alpha emulator by Camiel Vanderhoeven (who is now Chief Architect at VSI, the company that makes OpenVMS, for x86 nowdays).
LineageOS, the de-Googled Android ROM that serves as the backbone for pretty much the entire custom Android ROM community, has published an article about what the Android developer verification changes mean for them.
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually kind of an oddball in its expandability and design.
BorgBackup 2.0.0b22 is coming soon (few days to 1 week), including support for packs, improving speed and efficiency of remote repositories!
Due to the big repository/storage changes, it will likely have bugs - help finding them!
Work on packs is an ongoing Google Summer of Code project of Mrityunjay Raj (https://github.com/mr-raj12/).
Basic functionality is already working, more fine tuning, bug fixing, borg check --repair is still to do.
Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1955. Cover by Ed Emshwiller Who’s ready for another retro-review of Galaxy Science Fiction? (You are!) And here it is — the April, 1955 issue. The intense cover is “Hostile Reception on Aldebaran” by Ed Emshwiller.
It was six years ago. Six years. Do you remember? Do you remember the lockdown summer of 2020? Things may have been easing up by then where you were, but here in California the ball was just getting rolling.
Guest post by Francesco Marinari
In 1914 the Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Reclamation,
investigated the possibilities of developing the Columbia River. Thousands of
arid but potentially fertile acres needed only water to become the Imperial
Valley of the Northwest.
A fairly big moment for the ReactOS project: it has just received its very first system call from NT6. The system call that has been added is NtGetCurrentProcessorNumberEx, which is used for returning the processor number of the logical processor that a caller is running on.
An experiment that involved feeding a dead goat to a Komodo dragon as well as an analysis of thousands of ancient bones suggests that Homo floresiensis was neither a skilled hunter of big game nor a master of fire
The annual reception at Spaso House was more than a party. It was a showcase of the culture, values, and democratic ideals that gave America influence far beyond its military might.
Earth was once covered by a global magma ocean, which later cooled and crystallised – now traces of this primordial event have been found in magma from a young volcano in the Indian Ocean
NASA’s Swift space telescope is reaching the end of its two-decade run in orbit – unless a satellite launched on 3 July can give it a lifesaving boost
For how often people invoke it, the concept of “hell” in Christianity is remarkably vague and nebulous, as both the Old and New Testament barely go into detail about the concept. As such, I’m glad Microsoft has now given us a clear vision of hell and what, exactly, it looks like, ending centuries of denominational disagreements.
Female orangutans are generally solitary, but they travel more and eat less in an apparent effort to ensure their offspring have someone to play with
NetBSD is the only BSD without a Vulkan stack (Mesa and Lavapipe), but that’s about to change. The effort to bring Vulkan to NetBSD is now in beta, with prebuilt binaries coming soon. Mesa configures, compiles, links, installs, and registers the Lavapipe software Vulkan driver on NetBSD 10.1 amd64, against LLVM 19.1.7.
EveryMac turned 30. On July 2, 1996, EveryMac.com launched. Thirty years is a long time — and a great deal has changed since then — but what has not changed is that EveryMac.com has been there to provide you with detailed info on every Mac from the original 128k to the current line.
The 250th anniversary is corrupt, embarrassing and an utter failure. It's the perfect encapsulation of Trump's US.
The 250th anniversary is corrupt, embarrassing and an utter failure. It's the perfect encapsulation of Trump's US.
Leah Bodine Drake was born on December 22, 1904 in Chanute, Kansas to Thomas and Cornelia (née Bodine) Drake. Her father worked in the oil industry. Drake was sent to the Oakhurst School for Girls in Cincinnati and later attended Hamilton College, a junior college operated by Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky as well as Sayre College in the same city.
A very fine month indeed, in all sorts of ways. There was a cinema visit, a birthday party, many meals with friends, and a growing sense of contentment with the life I am privileged to enjoy
Highlights of the month:
- Guerilla gardening, still surviving
- Moved from idno to micro.blog
- BBQs on the terrace
- Snagged a lovely bamboo stick for Qi Gong
- Dogsitting for a weekend
- Open studios at the Spanish Academy
- Wandering the old neighbourhood for three hours while the car was serviced
- Almost private glorious visit to Lago di Martignano
- Off to Umbria for a week with friends old and new.
Activities
June:
- Walking with sticks: 0
- Reading: 18
- Steps (avge): 7831
- Podcasts: 15 (all of them logged)
- In bed/asleep 7:28/7:20
- Cycled: 1
- Weight (avge): 90.4
- Naps: 29 (A record?)
May: (low because Ireland)
- Walking with sticks: 0
- Reading: 18
- Steps (avge): 8458
- Podcasts: 7 (all of them logged)
- In bed/asleep 7:48/7:40
- Cycled: 4
- Weight (avge): 90.7
- Naps: 16
Stuff Done
I succumbed to the offer of a free month with ChatGPT and enjoyed using it to do things like make it easier (but not easy) to move from idno to micro.blog.
Natalya Saprunova's photo series exploring coastal erosion and permafrost thaw across Inuvialuit territories in Canada has won the New Scientist Editors Award at the Earth Photo 2026 competition
The clock is ticking for Android as a (somewhat) open platform. If you are running Android 8 or higher, a virus has been installed on your device and is silently awaiting remote activation. Over the past few months, devices around the world have been infected with this novel strain, with as many as 4 billion Android handsets and tablets estimated to have already been contaminated, meaning that around half of all humanity may be at risk from this threat.
What if you need to do very low-level testing involving the very guts of Windows NT, but don’t need most of the userland that sits on top? In fact, what if that userland only slows you down and complicates the work you’re trying to do? The solution is Windows PE (Windows Preinstallation Environment).
M/PC is a concatenative operating system for Varvara, inspired by Openfirmware, designed to manage files on system without a file browser. It uses the postfix notation, meaning that the function success their operands.
