There’s something poetic about the World Cup taking place in North America while Microsoft keeps scoring own goals like this. Microsoft updated its Surface buying guide to describe 8GB RAM as “great for everyday use like browsing, streaming, schoolwork, and productivity apps.” A companion FAQ adds that 16GB or more is what unlocks Copilot+ PC features.

Astral is a hobby operating system written in C for 64bit architectures, with a collection of ported software like X.org, fvwm, the xbps package manager, and tons more. I think it’s quite a neat system – the code’s on GitHub – made even neater by the fact it can run not only Minecraft, but now also has a working port of Wine that can run a few games.

Imagine your favorite team just scored an incredible, last-second goal at the World Cup. So you log online to celebrate with other fans. But, using data it’s already collected on you, the social media platform you like to post on wrongly guesses that you’re under 16 so it forces you to go to a third-party verification app and provide images of your face or your government-issued ID.

The US government is trying to speed up the development of quantum computers so it can have one sooner

For decades, we’ve thought that childbirth is uniquely challenging for humans, but it turns out that many other primates find the birth process just as difficult

Sleep is essential, yet humans have evolved to need so little of it. When evolutionary anthropologist David Samson delved into our ancient past to find the reasons why, he discovered surprising ways to get a better night’s rest

Women who were vaccinated against covid-19 in the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle reported having a breakthrough infection sooner than those vaccinated during their follicular phase

Tiny 3D-printed diving suits allow cockroaches to walk underwater for up to 3 hours with no ill effects, which could enable a cyborg insect swarm to explore disaster zones and perhaps even Mars

It’s been quiet for a few days since I’ve been sick, but I’m feeling a bit better since today marks the official end of my one month of using Windows 11 that you people donated for. An article about my experience is definitely upcoming, including whether or not I’ll actually stick with Windows 11 on my laptop or go back to Linux, but before we get there, let’s talk about Microsoft once again capitulating to the reality that a lot of people really don’t want to let go of Windows 10.

A rare variant of a gene called TP53 means Tracy Hutchinson has an extreme risk of developing cancer anywhere in her body, causing endless anxiety and requiring regular whole-body MRIs and other screening

DNA from ancient humans has been found on a prehistoric cave painting and on cave walls, demonstrating the potential to one day identify individual artists and resolve the debate over Neanderthals' artistic abilities

The New Scientist Book Club’s read for July is Claire North’s space opera Slow Gods. In this extract from its second chapter, we learn about the upbringing of its protagonist on the planet Tu-mdo

Claire North, whose space opera Slow Gods is the July read for the New Scientist Book Club, discusses how a population might deal with knowledge that their planet will be destroyed in 100 years

The world of quantum video games is vast – there are hundreds that are either inspired by quantum mechanics or use quantum computers in their development. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan explores how these could change our understanding of quantum physics, or even help us make better devices

The current temperatures in western and central Europe would have been virtually impossible 50 years ago, and unprecedented humidity levels make this heatwave especially dangerous

Growing numbers of homeowners are installing batteries that store electricity when it is cheap, which helps balance the grid and cuts emissions, and cheaper plug-in batteries will soon let more people do the same

We have identified the gene that, when activated, initiates the developmental programme that results in cells forming a human body

The loss of Antarctica’s doomsday glacier would transform our planet. Now scientists are revealing the secrets of this remotest of places, and asking the question: is its demise inevitable?

This August a total solar eclipse is set to be visible across parts of Europe, while a partial eclipse will sweep across about a quarter of the planet – here’s how to catch it

The extreme heat currently being felt in Europe isn’t the new normal – much worse is to come, and we are doing far too little to adapt, says Michael Le Page

IBM's latest chip packs in twice as many transistors as the current state-of-the-art chip by adding a second layer of silicon circuitry

Phages, viruses that infect bacteria, could be genetically manipulated to destroy cancerous cells using the immunity we have acquired from vaccines

Scrolls from the Roman library of Herculaneum that were carbonised by a volcanic eruption have been read in their entirety for the first time, thanks to scans and AI software

An instrument on the Perseverance rover has identified large, complex carbon compounds alongside unusual patterns on the surface of rocks that resemble traces of microbial activity

We have developed genetic technologies that could wipe out entire species of pests that are harmful to us. Columnist Michael Le Page says the flesh-eating screwworm is the most likely first target

These images from photographer Kristin Bethge document Brazil's milk bank system, which provides some of the world's cheapest and safest donated milk to hundreds of thousands of babies

Feedback isn't sure what to make of a ground-breaking piece of research into the understudied topic of "subjective individual variability in onion tearing and its relationship to chemosensory sensitivity"

The first six months of the year have brought us popular science reads on everything from consciousness to cosmology. Liz Else rounds up her favourites

Sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson rounds up her favourite reads of the year to date – and highlights one particular book as her top pick

From the age of legal adulthood to the concept of "profound autism", policy-makers are turning to neuroscience to help shape laws and policies, but the science simply isn't ready

An analysis of tooth proteins suggests all 23 Homo naledi individuals found in the Rising Star cave in South Africa were female, which strengthens the case that they were placed there deliberately

Jessica Atkin knows more than anyone else about what it would take to supply food for a moon base. She reveals how to build a lunar farm and what astronauts can expect to dine on

Genetic analysis of Neanderthals in north-western Europe reveals that this population was surprisingly genetically diverse, hinting that inbreeding didn’t lead to the species' demise

Oestrogen levels fluctuate throughout a woman's menstrual cycle, which may impact how efficiently a drug that targets the brain can reach its destination

The area surrounding our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole contains three strangely different populations of stars – but one hidden black hole could explain all of them

A study claims that the North Pole Dome crater in Western Australia was caused by an asteroid strike 3 billion years ago, but other researchers dispute the proposed age

Every little thing in a graphical user interface that we take for granted today, no matter how small, was thought up by someone, at some point. Case in point: the little red squiggly lines underneath misspelled words.

I’ve had my share of issues with network shares on any operating system, but since I mostly use KDE these days I found this deep dive into how, exactly, network shares work in KDE quite interesting.

Fans can make you hotter rather than cooler, but the temperature at which you should turn them off depends on several factors, including your age and the humidity level

A cave in Belize contains teeth from dozens of important Maya people buried elsewhere, which may attest to a ritual intended to ensure their passage to the underworld

Raising children appears to keep the brain young, potentially acting as a buffer against cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s

Not much is known about Starfall, SpaceX's new delivery system, but an assessment published in May revealed its intended purpose

Around a third of people are able to almost fully rebuild their brains after a stroke and uncovering why is pointing the way to better treatments for everyone

A gene therapy that instructs cells to produce more of an anti-ageing protein called klotho is about to be offered by a US company at overseas clinics to bypass FDA rules

The developer working on Xfwl4, the Wayland compositor for Xfce, has published the new compositor’s very first alpha release. Considering it’s only been six months or so of work, it’s impressive to see the effort reach this state already.

A woman with severe Alzheimer's disease who hadn't spoken more than monosyllables in years began initiating conversation after a single dose of psilocybin

Valve officially made the Steam Machine available (sort of but not really) today, and if you were hoping for the president of the Yacht Collectors’ Club to have found a loophole through the RAM and storage crisis, I’ll be the bearer of bad news: the base Steam Machine model with 512GB of storage and no controller costs $1049 or €1039.

A spider living in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia, builds a snare trap reminiscent of a Roman-era ballista weapon that it uses to catapult green tree ants into a web 30 centimetres above

The brain undergoes a full renovation during menopause. Although these changes are profound, we’re learning that the long-term impact needn’t be all bad

Researchers say a surgery that let pigs with completely severed spinal cords walk again may lead to human trials, and then perhaps even full head or brain transplants. Columnist Helen Thomson is intrigued but sceptical of whether the technique can be successful in humans

Several start-ups have tried to grow seaweed to remove atmospheric CO2, but this could affect the levels of nutrients in the ocean and hamper other CO2-sucking processes

When does your brain reach adulthood? We're now understanding the many ways the organ continues to mature decades after society first deems you an adult

The next generation of AI models are meant to be trained by people paid to have conversations with them, but several of these workers have admitted to New Scientist that they simply get chatbots to do it instead.

In macOS, you can apparently create files and directories in the Finder with names that include slashes. If you then go into the terminal and take a look with ls, you’ll see that the slashes are actually colons.

Apple’s Swift has become the de-facto language for Apple’s own developers for a while now, and it seems that with the new operating system releases from the company unveiled during WWDC, Switch is now also being used in the kernel.

Every website has a favicon. It’s that little icon in your browser tab. Usually you upload it once and then never think about it again. But. A favicon is just an image. An image is just pixels. And pixels are just bytes.

I mean, this is preaching to the choir, but let’s go anyway. I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. I’m mostly using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots.

Older mice that received a faecal microbiome transplant from younger animals went on to have improved brain plasticity, which suggests their brains could overcome a neurological condition that is typically successfully treated only in childhood

Something is absorbing light on the surfaces of Pluto and Saturn’s moon Titan, and figuring out what it is could be crucial to understanding Titan’s complex chemistry

Efficiency ratings on portable air conditioners don’t give consumers the full picture, and one type of aircon unit is so inefficient that it should be banned, says Michael Le Page

Carbon monoxide in Uranus's deep atmosphere indicates that the planet contains more ice than rock, suggesting it formed more like Neptune than we thought

A fascinating novel approach by researchers at MIT, called Fractal, to study in-depth how processors actually work. A team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) decided to build something different.

The disruption of your gut microbiome is a major consequence, and possible cause, of ageing. Columnist Graham Lawton looks into recent trials examining whether it can be replenished through diet and prebiotics, probiotics or postbiotics

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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