Tree bark has a total surface area similar to all of the land area on Earth. It is home to a wide range of microbial species unknown to science, and they can either take up or emit gases that have a warming effect on the climate
A preliminary analysis suggests that industrially useful quantum computers designs come with a broad spectrum of energy footprints, including some larger than the most powerful existing supercomputers
There’s so much shit going on in the world right now, and we can all use a breather. So, let’s join Carl Svensson and look at some pretty Amiga Workbench screenshots. Combining my love for screenshots with the love for the Amiga line of computers, I’ve decided to present a small, curated selection of noteworthy Amiga Workbenches – Workbench being the name of the Amiga’s desktop environment.
The solution the Flatpak team is looking into is to use virtualisation for the graphics driver, as the absolute last-resort option to keep things working when nothing else will. It’s a complex and interesting solution to a complex and interesting problem.
Satellite photos show meltwater on the surface of iceberg A23a collecting in an unusual way, which may be a sign that the huge berg is about to break apart
A man’s severe reaction to a tattoo, which made all his hair fall out and destroyed his sweat glands, has reignited concerns about the immune effects of some tattoo inks
Jeffrey Lord was a house name used for a series of 37 fantasy/SF novels published between 1969 and 1984. They were billed as an “adult” fantasy series, meaning that they had sex in them. However the sex was pretty mild by today’s standards.
A comprehensive review confirms the benefits of exercise for treating depression, even if the exact reasons remain unclear
Winter finally started in earnest these last few days. Got out for my first cross country skiing session of the year today.
Crossing an ice covered lake in an otherwise quiet landscape is eerie. The ice is constantly shifting, cracking and resettling, resulting in intermittently ominous sounds.
Steph Ango in File over app:
File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.
This philosophy is what I hinted at in footnote 9 in my recent post about my current tech stack.
Storing data in open and accessible file formats is the way to go. It minimises lock-in and gives you great portability and freedom of choice.
Socks have always been a problem for me. I remember my mother, back when I was a kid, lamenting that I wrecked my socks too quickly. And this has remained a problem all through my life. I don't know the cause. Perhaps I drag my feet when I walk. Maybe I mess around and slide slide too much, even as a middle aged man. All I know is that when I buy two ten packs of regular cotton socks, holes start appearing a month or two later.
As a forty year old man of means I've decided that enough is enough. No longer will I suffer the discomfort of walking around with holes in my socks. Instead, I will approach this problem methodically, with a twofold aim:
- Figure out which socks on the market are the cheapest per wear.
- Pinpoint the correct replacement cycle and make sure that I order new socks before holes start appearing in my current batch.
In my advanced age, I've come to prefer wool over cotton in many cases. After embarking on an exhaustive study of sock durability, I seem to be in luck. Wool blend socks appear, in general, to be more durable than cotton socks. Further, my extensive research efforts led me towards two particular brands:
There seems to be a loose consensus in sock durability awareness communities that these two brands offer the most value of any socks on the market. Well, I'll find out.
My first experiment will be pitching Smartwool's Everyday Anchor Line Crew Socks against a Norwegian market generic brand wool-blend sock.
Now, I fully expect the Smartwool socks to outlast its opponent. But, the thing is, they also cost five times as much. For the price of three pairs of Smartwool socks, I bought fifteen pairs of the generic brand wool-blend socks. Fifteen!
I've therefore devised the following experiment:
- My sock rotation will be limited to six socks.
- When the generic brand socks start tearing, I'll replace them will three new pairs.
Will the three pairs of Smartwool socks outlast fifteen pairs of the generic brand wool socks? I have my doubts, but I will let you know. Naturally, I will also award extra points for comfort, if one or the other stands out in that regard. Like and subscribe to make sure you don't miss the results!
The second phase of this experiment will be pitching the winner against Darn Tough socks to determine the ultimate winner. Whoever it is, they will, in all likelihood, gain my patronage for the remainder of my life. Well, if I can find a way to purchase Darn Tough's more anonymous colourways here in Norway. I'm just a plain socks kinda guy.
Drugs like Ozempic have transformed how we treat obesity, but a review of almost 40 studies shows it doesn't take long for people to regain weight if they come off them
A collection of arrow points excavated in South Africa has provided the oldest direct evidence of hunters deploying plant-based poisons on their weapons, a practice that has continued into modern times in some traditional cultures
We are going to be getting a lot of exciting new information about galaxies in 2026, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who can't wait to see what it can tell us
There is a growing trend to see our relationship with nature as a spiritual thing. This is a mistake, argues Richard Smyth
From Fallout and Gen Z Star Trek to the classic Neuromancer, you will be glued to the TV this year, says TV columnist Bethan Ackerley
The Nesin Mathematics Village in western Turkey was dreamed up by award-winning mathematician Ali Nesin to engage his students
With a new 28 Days Later movie and a new Dune, not to mention films from Stephen Spielberg and Ridley Scott, this is shaping up to be a vintage year for sci-fi, says Simon Ings
After finding success with last year's New Year's resolution, health reporter Grace Wade has grand plans for 2026 – and the science to back them up
While US President Donald Trump and his administration are making false and debunked claims about the causes of autism, real research is improving our understanding of the condition
We need to call it out for what it is.
Four years ago, I reviewed a truly fully open source desktop computer, from operating system down to firmware: the Raptor Blackbird, built entirely around IBM’s POWER9 processor. The overall conclusion was that using was mostly an entirely boring experience, which was a very good thing – usually ideologically-fueled computers come with a ton of downsides and limitations for average users, but Raptor’s POWER9 machines bucked this trend by presenting a bog-standard, run-of-the-mill desktop Linux experience, almost indistinguishable from using an x86 machine.
The jawbones and vertebrae of a hominin that lived 773,000 years ago have been found in North Africa and could represent a common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans
Most planetary systems contain worlds larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, and the low-density planets around one young star should help us understand how such systems form
You might feel like the days and weeks are slipping by. Here is how one psychologist says you can shift your experience of time
Back in September, we got a new Lazarus Gray book: The Adventures of Lazarus Gray, Vol. 16, from Barry Reese. This one has a novel, Shadows Over Yalta. As with other recent Reese works, this is from his own imprint, Reese Unlimited.
AI models such as ChatGPT and Gemini fail to give adequate advice for 60 per cent of queries relating to women’s health in a test created by medical professionals
Immune cells are most commonly engineered to kill cancers, but now, scientists have shown the technique makes the gut lining of older mice resemble that of younger mice, raising hopes that the same approach could work in people
About half a year ago, I wrote an article about persistent rumours I’d heard from Android ROM projects that Google was intending to discontinue the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). AOSP has been gutted by Google over the years, with the company moving more and more parts of the operating system into closed-source, non-AOSP components, like Google Play Services.
Since we moved to a new year, we also moved to a new month, and that means a new monthly report from Redox, the general purpose operating system written in Rust. The report obviously touches on the news we covered a few weeks ago that Redox now has the first tidbits of a modesetting driver for Intel hardware, but in addition to that, the project has also taken the first steps towards basic read-only APIs from Linux DRM, in order to use Linux graphics drivers.
Happy New Year 2026! Once again, a lot has happened in Gentoo over the past months. New developers, more binary packages, GnuPG alternatives support, Gentoo for WSL, improved Rust bootstrap, better NGINX packaging, … As always here we’re going to revisit all the exciting news from our favourite Linux distribution.
The new version brings a ton of new enhancements and fixes to all 3 supported platforms, with Steam running not only on Arm64, but also on RiSC-V and on Loongarch! And this is the Linux version of Steam, not the Windows one (but the Windows one works too if you really prefer that one).
A 1.78-million-year-old partial elephant skeleton found in Tanzania associated with stone tools may represent the oldest known evidence of butchery of the giant herbivores
The earliest acoustic vibrations in the cosmos weren’t exactly sound – they travelled at half the speed of light and there was nobody around to hear them anyway. But Jim Baggott says from the first moments, the universe was singing
Good afterevenmorn, Readers! How was your winter holidays? I hope you found it gentle and restful and full of the things that make you happy. I spent some time with family, which is always lovely, and more time by myself recovering (the joys of being a massive introvert).
The curse of having to remember easily hackable passwords may soon be over, as a new alternative is set to take over in 2026
The benefits of sleep may be more universal than we thought. We know it helps clear waste from the brain in humans, and now it seems that even creatures without brains like ours get similar benefits
An ambitious form of climate modelling aims to pin the blame for disasters – from floods to heatwaves – on specific companies. Is this the tool we need to effectively prosecute the world’s biggest carbon emitters?
Ever noticed your computer acting sluggish or warning you about low storage? Temporary files could be the sneaky culprit. Windows creates these files while installing apps, loading web pages, or running updates.
For nearly three decades, the International Space Station has been the only destination in low Earth orbit, but that will change this year. Could it be the start of a thriving economy in space?
Modelling suggests both carbon taxes and green subsidies will be necessary to decarbonise the US economy, but the inconsistent policies of successive presidents are the "worst case" scenario
The way the histories of CP/M, DOS, Microsoft, and the 8086 intertwine would be worthy of an amazing film if it wasn’t for the fact it would be very hard to make it interesting screen material. Few OEMs were asking for an 8086 version of CP/M.
We’ve talked about just how bad Apple’s regular icons have become, but what about the various icons Apple now plasters all over its menus, buttons, and dialogs? They’ve gotten so, so much worse.
CheriBSD is a Capability Enabled, Unix-like Operating System that extends FreeBSD to take advantage of Capability Hardware on Arm’s Morello and CHERI-RISC-V platforms. CheriBSD implements memory protection and software compartmentalization features, and is developed by SRI International and the University of Cambridge.
The Prudhoe ice dome disappeared during a warm period 7000 years ago. Global warming could cause similar temperatures by 2100, showing the Greenland ice sheet’s vulnerability
Long-term evaluations of the success or failure of the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela will be determined by what happens next.
For years, we've thought of autism as lying on a spectrum, but emerging evidence suggests that it comes in several distinct types. The implications for how we support autistic people could be profound
A galaxy cluster in the early universe is 10 times hotter than it ought to be, which may reshape how we think these enormous structures formed
Over the past couple of years, S.T. Joshi’s Sarnath Press has been putting out weird-fiction collections from several lesser-known authors published in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. At present, there are almost a dozen volumes, with more in the works.
A study of 160 European famines between 1500 and 1800 shows that El Niño weather events led to the onset of some famines and extended the duration of others
A host of new science books are due to hit shelves in January, by authors including Claudia Hammond, Deborah Cohen and Daisy Fancourt
The US government is approving the drug leucovorin to address rising rates of autism, despite limited evidence that it works. This year, results from the largest trial yet should give more insight into its potential
Up until now, it’s always remained possible to activate Windows offline, by calling a phone number, going through a lengthy phase of entering digits on your phone dialpad, and carefully listening to and entering a string of numbers on the device you’re trying to activate.
Researchers at Google have used their Willow quantum computer to demonstrate that "quantum contextuality" may be a crucial ingredient for its computational prowess
Big hitter Peter F. Hamilton has a new sci-fi novel out this month – and Booker winner George Saunders ventures into speculative fiction with his latest book, Vigil
Happy 2026! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish in 52 weeks. I really enjoy ‘meeting’ with my friends – and some strangers – here at Black Gate every Monday morning. Keep checking in, and let’s keep the discourse going on things we love.
An analysis of several experiments aimed at detecting the mysterious neutrino has identified a hint of a crack in the standard model of particle physics
Ben Thompson in AI and the Human Condition:
Perhaps it follows, then, that the devaluing of labor Patel and Trammell warns about actually frees humans up to once again create beauty?
A person can dream. (Relevant link: The Youtube video Why is the modern world so ugly? by the Cultural Tutor.)
On the whole, I'm with Ben on his optimistic take. In a way, it would be posthumous vindication for J.M. Keynes, who thought that the eventual outcome of technological progress would be that we'd all essentially spend our days with close to endless leisure time.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme of things not found within recorded time. from ‘Mythopoeia‘ (1931) by JRR Tolkien The impetus to write my Tolkien series came from rewatching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and realizing just how much I dislike them.
Desktop Classic System is an operating system based on Debian and a customized version of the MATE Desktop Environment that hearkens back to, but is not a direct copy of, the classic Mac OS. DCS seeks to provide and sometimes even improve upon the conceptual simplicity offered by the old Macintosh.
KDE developer Herz published a detailed look at the immense amount of work they’ve done cleaning up the developer onboarding documentation for KDE. All that just to say that I’m finally content with the state of beginner onboarding docs in our KDE Developer Platform.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the HP-UX FAQ eventually grew an entry for “how can I make a 712 run headless”. It was possible, and to do it you had to change the firmware “console” path.
Thanks to Robb I came across this teaser trailer confirming that Malcolm in the Middle is coming back.
I loved the original series. Can't wait for this! Hope the full cast is coming back. Looks promising based on the trailer.
The 1980s Nostalgia of Trump's Foreign Policy is probably going to end up, like Stranger Things, as a horror show.
Here’s a New Year’s treat* to distract you from the fact that I haven’t completed a new themed watch-a-thon (it’s coming, eventually). I’ve had a little think about my favorite films, and what makes them my favorites.
IceWM, the venerable X11 window manager, has released a new version, bumping the version number to 4.0.0. This release brings a big update to the alt+tab feature. The Alt+Tab window switcher can now handle large numbers of application windows in both horizontal and in vertical mode.
Did Sahelanthropus, which lived 7 million years ago, walk on two legs like a modern human? It's complicated
Astronomers were puzzled by a black hole around 50 million times the mass of the sun with no stars, spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope – now simulations suggest it could be a primordial black hole, something we have never seen before
Now that I’ve looked at all of the official Tor Doubles, plus the proto-version and the unpublished version, where to next if you like the double format. Obviously, there are the Ace Doubles, which ran from 1952 until 1978. That series provides the reader with at least 261 additional volumes of science fiction, plus a similar number of westerns and numerous mystery novels.
How to make less of a twat of yourself in 2026 than you did in 2025.
Some practical and political commitments so you can make less of a twat of yourself this year than you did the last.
The New Scientist Book Club has just finished our December read, Iain M. Banks's sci-fi novel The Player of Games - and most of us were fans of this big-thinking Culture tale
The author of the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, on how she created her startling protagonist
In this extract from the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are introduced to Sierra Greer's protagonist, a sex robot called Annie
A woman's body has been found to consist of varying proportions of male and female cells because of an extremely rare form of chimerism
McFaul's World will be even more active in 2026.
Researchers have confirmed the mass of a free-floating planet thanks to a lucky convergence of ground- and space-based telescopes
Chess960 involves shuffling the pieces at the back of the board, and an analysis suggests doing so can increase the complexity of the game to favour white, black or neither player
Happy New year! This emerging blog salutes Sue Granquist, who contributed every other Thursday championing Goth Chick News in this very time slot. Sue Granquist contributed 741 articles over 16 years here on Black Gate with a special focus on horror movies and conventions (the longest-running column in Black Gate history).
The new year isn’t even a day old, and Haiku developer X512 dropped something major in Haiku users’ laps: the first alpha version of an accelerated NVIDIA graphics drivers for Haiku. Supporting at least NVIDIA Turing and Ampere GPUs, it’s very much in alpha state, but does allow for proper GPU acceleration, with the code surely making its way to Haiku builds in the near future.
Olivia Remes, a mental health researcher at the University of Cambridge, says these are the three things everyone should do this New Year to cultivate a more positive mindset
Star Barbarian (Lancer Books, 1969). Cover by Jeff Jones I picked up a couple of books by Dave Van Arnam called Star Barbarian and Lord of Blood that have connections to the Sword & Planet genre. They’re set in a future time after Earth has colonized many planets.
Nicolas Solerieu in On wearables:
The marketing is a mishmash of sport, lifestyle, health value propositions fading in a goodness mush, rarely delivering much beyond a wrist-mounted stream of numbers.
Couldn't agree more. After a few years of wearing my sports watch 24/7, I realised that the data and the way it was presented did my head in, and had no positive effect on my health and fitness. For the past couple of years I've worn an analogue watch, only switching to my sports watch to track my actual workouts.
I am unreasonably proud of getting this right in the workout log before actually getting there and seeing that something was off.
Calendar years and ISO weeks don't really intermingle. Can't wait for the scramble at work on Monday as people start trying to figure out what's what because of this fact.
It’s 31 December 2025 today, the last day of the year, but it also happens to mark the end of support for the last and final version of one of my favourite operating systems: HP-UX. Today is the day HPE puts the final nail in the coffin of their long-running UNIX operating system, marking the end of another vestige of the heyday of the commercial UNIX variants, a reign ended by cheap x86 hardware and the increasing popularisation of Linux.
Looking back on a turbulent year.
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Understanding the chemical properties of a molecule is an inherently quantum problem, making quantum computers a good tool for the job – and we may start seeing this take off in 2026
