Science fiction fans naturally know H.G. Wells best for his scientific romances. But after 1905, he wrote relatively little in that genre. Instead, he turned his efforts variously to the Fabian Society, Britain’s indigenous socialist movement; to surveys of human knowledge for general audiences, in the style later followed by Isaac Asimov (I read my grandmother’s copy of The Outline of History, and I still have the four volumes of The Science of Life); and to realistic novels, starting with...
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A fossil bed in China containing animals up to 554 million years old suggests that we may have to reconsider the idea that life suddenly diversified during the Cambrian explosion
Recognising rhythmic patterns was thought to require a big brain, but a series of experiments has shown that buff-tailed bumblebees have this ability, too
If you would like to hear me speak about Elemental check the dates below
A recording from Arthur Snell and The New World's live video
The fallout of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and its implications for global geopolitics
Nelson Dellis credits techniques like the method of loci for his extraordinary memory. Now, brain scans have revealed the parts of his brain that this approach taps into, and how we can use it to improve our own recall
Perhaps the countries whose economies are most directly linked to the Straits of Hormuz should take care of the Straits of Hormuz
A galaxy spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, known as Hebe, that existed just 400 million years after the big bang appears to contain extremely pure and young stars
If you are unlucky enough to have been bitten by a snake, you are unlikely to want to repeat the experience. Not so for Tim Friede, who intentionally exposes himself to deadly bites in the hope of developing a treatment for the 5 million people who are bitten each year
April 1st is now globally over - relax!
AI won't decide about what's in your backups.
Charles Saunders (1946 – 2020) was one of two men who established a sub-genre of Sword & Sorcery that has come to be called Sword & Soul. The other was Samuel Delany (1942 – ). Saunders was born in the USA but moved to Canada as a conscientious objector after being drafted for Vietnam.
I don’t like to cover “current events” very much, but the American government just revealed a truly bewildering policy effectively banning import of new consumer router models. This is ridiculous for many reasons, but if this does indeed come to pass it may be beneficial to learn how to “homebrew” a router.
Four astronauts have begun a 10-day journey around the moon and back again, the first crewed flight to the moon since 1972
Genetically engineering tobacco plants could enable a more sustainable production method for psychedelic drugs, which are increasingly in demand for research and medical uses
Ducks with corkscrew penises, fish changing sex – what do we really know about sex and reproduction on Earth? Less than we think, reveals a mind-boggling new book. Elle Hunt explores
But a few similarities cannot be ignored.
Traditional encryption methods have long been vulnerable to quantum computers, but two new analyses suggest a capable enough machine may be built much sooner than previously thought
In a shift that is reshaping entire ecosystems, the open oceans are letting less light in. We don't fully understand the consequences yet, but there is still hope, says oceanographer Tim Smyth
The third right arm of male octopuses has a specialised role in mating, and the creatures take extra care to avoid damaging it or losing it to a predator
April has a lot to offer when it comes to popular science reading, promising to help us do everything from future-proof our brains courtesy of Hannah Critchlow, to get to grips with really big numbers, thanks to Richard Elwes
I had not previously been aware of J.P. Linde, but when I saw he wrote an authorized Peregrine novel, I wanted to see what else he has done. One is Son of Ravage, which by the cover design is a clear Doc Savage pastiche — or at least giving us a son of Savage.
A virus seems to have jumped from marine animals into people for the first time ever, and it is causing serious vision problems
Plug-in solar panels are a cheaper, simpler alternative to professionally installed panels. But can they really reduce energy bills and are they safe? Matthew Sparkes investigates
A study based on tree rings claimed that droughts played a role in events that led to the Roman withdrawal from Britain, but other researchers say that isn't backed up by historical evidence
A collection of stories set in George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards universe and a novel from The Expanse author James S. A. Corey are among the science-fiction books we’re looking forward to this month
Mat Duggan in I Can't See Apple's Vision:
The first time I thought "oh man, they've lost the thread" was Notifications. On iOS, Notifications make sense — you've got apps buried in folders three screens deep, so a unified system for surfacing what's happening is genuinely useful. On macOS, this design makes absolutely no sense at all.
I absolutely cannot wrap my head around notifications on the Mac. Why are they there? Where do they come from? Who decides what goes there? Every time I accidentally open that right sidebar, I'm always surprised to see a heap of notifications there. Should I be checking up on these more often? Am I missing out on important stuff?
The concept of ‘notifications’ in a desktop environment simply doesn't make sense to my, admittedly not very smart, brain.
Mat's post is spot on. Recommended reading!
Today is #WorldBackupDay - a good day to:
- start using borg backup
- upgrade to borg 1.4.4
- actually test a restore
- play with the latest borg2 beta
- contribute to borg development
- donate to the borg project
- give borgbackup a star on github
- update the borg packages, if you maintain some
- contribute to some project borg backup depends on
- contribute to some project that uses borg backup
Hi! If you like this piece and want to support my independent reporting and analysis, why not 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,
The muon collider was once dismissed as impossible, but is now gaining steam as the successor to the Large Hadron Collider. If built, it could offer a new window to reality
The immune system going rogue and attacking healthy tissue seems to behind some cases of long covid, a discovery that could open doors towards treatments
Improved hardware can send ten times as much data through existing fibre optic cables, potentially providing a way to massively upgrade the internet's infrastructure without the cost and inconvenience of laying any new cables
NASA’s Artemis II mission will be the first time humans have been around the moon in half a century, and its next launch window opens on 1 April
The science suggests that olive oil can help us fight cognitive decline and even Alzheimer’s. Columnist Helen Thomson finds that only works if we choose the right kind
The science suggests that olive oil can help us fight cognitive decline and even Alzheimer’s. Columnist Helen Thomson finds that only works if we choose the right kind
Good afterevenmorn, Readers! Everyone has a preference, right? Preferences show up all the time; in food, in friends, in partners, in art, films, and books. I, for example, like my food relatively spicy.
Rakhim in Related UI elements should not appear unrelated:
A few years ago a new trend in UI design emerged where related elements would appear more and more detached and unrelated to the things they are meant to point to.
Somewhat related to my comments on old versions of OS X being much better designed that the current iteration, is this post where Rakhim points out that this goes for browsers as well. Nobody can claim with a straight face that this evolution isn't degrading the design and user experience.
Why do so many people keep falling for the same trick over and over again? With an over $400 billion gap between the money invested in AI data centers and the actual revenue these products generate, Silicon Valley slowly returned to the tested and trusted playbook: advertising.
By reimplementing these features using capabilities, we made the kernel simpler by moving complex scheme and namespace management out of it which improved security and stability by reducing the attack surface and possible bugs.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before the time-honoured tradition of the demoscene also got infected by “AI”. For me personally, generative AI ruins much of the fun. I still enjoy creating pixel art and making little animations and demos.
Even if the conflict in the Middle East ends today, higher fuel, fertiliser and pesticide prices will lead to a food shock in the coming months. There is no easy way out, but accelerating the net-zero transition will help prevent future shocks
Cognitive decline, mental health and heart disease are all shaped by the deep links between heart and brain – with major implications for diagnoses and treatment
I recently received the 13th issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, the excellent magazine series focused on men’s adventure magazines, now starting its fourth year of publication. That’s a pretty good accomplishment.
1– BATTLEFRONT II IS PRETTY COOL I’ve posted before that Fortnite is my kind of shooter. Fast-paced, high action games like Marvel Rivals, and Call of Duty, aren’t fun for me. And I pretty much just die.
Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin
Time to make some plans...
Experiments on different kinds of milk have revealed that many plant-based milks are non-Newtonian fluids
An accounting of all the water that should have been and gone on Mars’s surface has come up with a discrepancy that shows just how little we understand the Red Planet’s hydrological history
Hold onto your butts — my new watch-a-thon continues! You can find Part 1 here. Who likes alien abduction flicks? I’ll soon fix that. No One Will Save You (2023) Kicking off the second half of this truncated list with the best invader film by far, 2023’s No One Will Save You, which had a somewhat muted limited theatrical release and subsequently can be found on Disney+/Hulu, but should not be overlooked.
Well, I guess it wasn't feature complete after all. Easy to forget when you're mostly running on the treadmill. Once the hills come around, though, you know you need to log and display elevation gain, or climbing.
So now my workout log does that.
You can see this in the summary section of today's run. As you can see, I climbed 140 metres. If you want to know the actual elevation profile, you can click on the elevation tab. This is just a little extra data point to give context to that visualisation.
For new readers, if you want to know more about how I went about putting the workout log together, I've covered the process extensively in these three posts:
- My blog workout log
- Workout log and site updates
- Workout log now totally, 100% feature complete
Andreas in Emulating old OS X versions with QEMU:
It's weird, because I never used these systems back when they were new, and yet I feel somehow nostalgic for them. I don't know why, but there's just something about the look of them. The colour palette, the skeuomorphism, the fonts and the overall design are just beautiful, and I wouldn't mind using an OS with this kind of look and feel today.
The early versions of Mac OS X were unequivocally better designed and a preferable user experience than the bastardised offspring that today's MacOS has become. My experience started with Tiger (10.4) and I would love to go back. In fact, if someone put together a Linux distro that closely emulates the early OS X aesthetic and UX, I would finally be forced to switch.
If you want to experience the old OS X versions yourself, Andreas' post guides you through the process.
A while ago, I came across a haiku by Basho by way of a two decades old post by Jason Kottke. The poem in question was ‘the whole family’ and goes like this:
the whole family
all with white hair and canes
visiting graves
It resonated deeply and sent me down a rabbit hole. I began my making a note of it. This to ensure I didn't forget the poem. The lines made me want to read more by Basho. Upon discovering that he was Japanese, I was reminded of the quote by the tourist towards the end of the movie Paterson:
Poetry in translations is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.
That got me thinking. Ideally I should learn Japanese to truly get a feel for Basho's work. But that was not a journey I was willing to begin at the moment. Nevertheless, I thought that instead of reading English translations, it would probably be one step up if I could instead find Norwegian translations. Poetry never came easy to me. Reading in my native tongue would probably be my best chance of ‘getting it’.
I then began searching for first hand translation. Translated poetry is bad enough. I certainly didn't want to spend my time reading AI-generated Norwegian translations based on English translation. Eventually I ended up discovering Fra duggens verden at the National Library of Norway's website.
The full title of the book is ‘Fra duggens verden: Basho i norsk gjendiktning (1644-1694)’. It translates to something like ‘From the dew's world: Basho re-created in Norwegian’ and the title made me confident that the author — of whom I knew nothing — had translated the works based on the originals. That it was released in 1985 made me reasonably certain they weren't AI-generated.
My next order of business was getting a hold of the book. Yes, I could technically read the book scans, in my browser, through the National Library's website. But that's no way to read a book! Of this particular book, I wanted a physical copy. That was easier said than done. My search eventually led me to the website of a local art gallery and antiquarian bookshop which claimed to have for sale. I emailed the owner that I wanted to buy the book, and a short while later it arrived in the mailbox outside my house.
At this point I still had no idea about what kind of book this was. My idea was that it contained translated haiku poems. To my surprise, the first half or so turned out to be a biography of Basho and his struggles to become founder of what's today know as haiku poetry.
Great stuff! I love getting more than I'd bargained for.
Basho's story was a fascinating one. His frequent pilgrimages throughout Japan to get away from ‘modern society’ of Japan in sixteen hundreds and live a more modest life to connect with nature rang familiar. Dørumsgaard doesn't hide his disdain for the contemporary society of the 1980s. He wonders what Basho would think of the lives we lead today. Which in turn made me wonder what both Basho and Dørumsgaard and would make of the world as it is in 2026. As I read this book in parallel with Letters from a Stoic, it struck me that perhaps this struggle to get back to natural world must be a universal human experience.
Despite Basho's poems and Dørumsgaard formal, almost to the point of heavy, and opinionated recounting of his live, the best part of this book to me was something else entirely: The smell. There is a certain, characteristic smell of old books and this book has it in spades. The smell brings me back to my life as a boy, sitting in the attic of my grandparents' house trying to find something interesting to read after ploughing through the Donald Duck comics I'd brought for entertainment. The sensation is so visceral that, for a tiny sliver of a moment, I feel as if I've been transported through time and space. Despite having finished the book, I still keep it on the side table next to my chair, only to pick it up towards my nose and flicker through the pages.
Sometimes you get way more than you bargained for.
As for Basho's poetry and Dørumsgaard's re-creations, well, they certainly are first hand translations. Dørumsgaard has included a sizeable sections of notes on his reasoning for the translations. And while I've gained newfound appreciation for both poetry as an art form, and haiku in particular, not a single other of the poems included in this book hit me as much as that first one I came across which pushed me down this rabbit hole. Dørumsgaard's Norwegian re-creation goes as follows:
Slektens siste
Alle med stokker
og hvite i håret
rusler de stille omkring mellem graver.
I guess that's poetry for you. It resonates when the most when you expect it the least. For instance when clicking a link to a twenty two year old blog post lamenting that the work of sorting and categorising has overshadowed the work itself. Nevertheless, here are some of my other favourites. I challenge you to find them recreated in whichever language you're the most comfortable reading poetry.
Tid og evighet
Hvor vis den mann som ikke tenker
«flyktig er livet»
ved synet av lyn.
Silhuet
En kråke
På en vissen gren
i høstens skumring…
Cikaden
Den sang sig
ut av livet –
tomt ligger skallet igjen.
Lede
Ofte føler jeg at de dødes rike
må være lik en ensom kveld
ved høst.
«L'etang mort»
En gammel dam –
en frosk som sprang:
et skvulp.
Years ago, when I was in college, I had one of those friends who never quite had
it together. You know the type; I'm talking lost a debit card and took three
months to get a new one because of some sort of "mixup" with the credit union
that I think consisted mostly of not calling them for three months.
Last week, I had the dumb good luck to be sitting to dinner with Christopher Buehlman just after the news came out that Nightfire’s new edition of Between Two Fires had hit #4 on the Bestseller list.
So apparently rsync is slop now. When I heard, I wanted to drop a quick
note on my blog to give an alternative: tar. It doesn’t do everything that rsync
does, in particular identifying and skipping up-to-date files, but tar + ssh can
definitely accomodate the use case of “transmit all of these files over an SSH
connection to another host”.
Consider the following:
tar -cz public | ssh example.org tar -C /var/www -xz
This will transfer the contents of ./public/ to
example.org:/var/www/public/, preserving file ownership and permissions and so
on, with gzip compression.
This guide describes how you can install a Plan 9 network on an OpenBSD machine (it will probably work on any unix machine though). The authentication service (called “authsrv” on Plan 9) is provided by a unix version: authsrv9.
Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says.
Today, we’re excited to announce a significant step forward in our ongoing commitment to Windows security and system reliability: the removal of trust for all kernel drivers signed by the deprecated cross-signed root program.
This learning and cooperation should have started years ago, but is better late than never.
I’m turning 40 in a month or so, and at 40 years young, I’m old enough to remember as far back as December 11 2025, when Disney and OpenAI “reached an agreement” to “bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to
Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area
During his second-ever spacewalk, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano felt water creeping across his face – and knew he could be moments from drowning inside his helmet
With no domestic institutions to restrain him, Trump has started a war which will hurt every one of us, all over the world.
With no domestic institutions to restrain him, this man has started a war which will hurt every one of us, shuddering out around the world in a great tide of pain.
After the passing of physicist Anthony Leggett, columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan remembers their personal connection with this giant of quantum physics, and explores the legacy of his enduring recipe for testing the edges of the quantum world
A new spacecraft concept called NOVA could keep asteroids from hitting our planet by using a huge magnet to gradually pull them apart while shifting their trajectories
Thomas Anstey Guthrie was born in London on August 8, 1856. He attended King’s College School and studied at Trinity Hall in Cambridge. Over the course of his career, he used multiple pseudonyms, including Hope Bandoff, William Monarch Jones, and the one most associated with his genre work, F.
Kim Stanley Robinson opens his classic science fiction novel Red Mars in 2026. As the New Scientist Book Club embarks on reading it in April, he looks back on its origins – and how the idea of moving to Mars holds up today
As the New Scientist Book Club reads Kim Stanley Robinson’s science-fiction novel in April, George Bass digs into why this 1992 book still feels so relevant today
This is the opening of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, the New Scientist Book Club read for April, as humans come to the planet to settle it
A long-overlooked area of the penis has been found to have the highest concentration of nerve endings and sensory structures in the organ, suggesting that it is the “male G-spot”
This Dark Muse News column continues its coverage of Beauty in Weird Fiction/Art via interviews (a series that began in 2014 on my author blog and was taken up by Black Gate in 2018). We’ve hosted authors such as Carol Berg, Anna Smith Spark, Darrell Schweitzer, CSE Cooney, Scott Oden, CS Friedman, Bryn Hammond….
I’ll never grow tired of reading about the crazy tricks the Windows 95 development team employed to make the user experience as seamless as they could given the constraints they were dealing with.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Monday it was banning the import of all new foreign-made consumer routers, the latest crackdown on Chinese-made electronic gear over security concerns.
It’s the end of an era: Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that the Mac Pro is being discontinued. It has been removed from Apple’s website as of Thursday afternoon. The “buy” page on Apple’s website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac’s homepage, where all references have been removed.
A female sperm whale has been filmed giving birth for the first time, supported by 10 adult females who lifted the calf out of the water and protected it from predators
Pieces of jawbone and teeth found in Egypt have been identified as a new early ape species named Masripithecus moghraensis, which lived about 17 million years ago
A computer language designed to robustly verify mathematical theorems and expose logical flaws has been turned towards a physics paper – and spotted an error. The discovery raises questions about how many other papers may harbour similar issues
In the cloud forest of Costa Rica, many canopy-dwelling animals do their business in strangler fig trees, perhaps as a way of leaving messages
A device that relies on quantum effects and oversized atoms may be a more reliable way to measure temperature that doesn't require calibration
Several US states, the country of Brazil, and I’m sure other places in the world have enacted or are planning to enact laws that would place the burden of age verification of users on the shoulders of operating system makers.
In a landmark trial, social media giants Meta and YouTube were found negligent and ordered to pay for harming a user's mental health. The decision could force major changes in how social platforms work
We shouldn't dismiss flowers as merely ornamental – these blooms are world-changers, argues a vivid new book by David George Haskell. Michael Marshall is mostly convinced
Feedback is prompted by readers to investigate the size of the shed in the term 'shedload', and gets down and dirty with particle physics in the quest
The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week
Shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards, this image by photographer Sebastian Di Domenico was taken in Columbia
A duo of drugs that boosts our glympathic system, which clears waste from our brain, also improves the removal of proteins associated with the onset of Alzheimer's disease
The remains of dogs from more than 14,000 years ago have been found in Turkey and the UK, revealing that domesticated animals were spread across Europe by hunter-gatherers
The same principles that help astronauts stay strong in microgravity can help us all resist the slow collapse of ageing – and it’s not all about hitting the gym more
A 20-year study has shown that, like photocopying photocopies, cloning doesn't produce perfect copies – with big implications for farming, conservation and de-extinction
I have posted on some other fanzines produced by Justin Marriott, and this time I take a look at Men of Violence: The Fanzine of Men’s Adventure Paperbacks. While not pulp, I’ve long felt that the numbered men’s adventure paperback series were another successor to the pulps.
