Today, you can get low-quality knockoffs of just about any popular smartphone on sites like AliExpress or Temu, whether they be iPhones, Galaxy phones, or whatever else. They have terrible build quality, bottom-of-the-barrel components and specifications, and all run outdated versions of Android – badly.

In the last few days, I built a shoot ’em up game by embedding a tiny custom bytecode VM and rendering the graphics using a fullscreen pixel shader. The result is a 3kB Windows executable. This was done for Langjam Gamejam, a 7-day challenge where you create a programming language and then use it to build a game.

A while back, when chatting with a colleague over their computer, I noticed that a logo did not look exactly the same as it did on mine. It looked thinner on theirs and more faithful to the original image.

To cut the cost of key stage 2 assessments, a UK government project proposes to use scripts generated by ChatGPT instead of real children's writing as examples supplied to moderators who check that grades are awarded fairly

A drug made up of THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis, reduced the severity and incidence of nightmares in people with PTSD

The use of explosives to kill fish is widespread across the tropics, and acoustic monitoring in an Indonesian archipelago detected more than 3500 explosions in 483 days

Almost three-quarters of England is now in drought conditions, resulting in restrictions on water use in many areas and severe wildfires – here's how it's affecting farming, wildlife and trees

A reconstruction of East Africa's environment 1.75 million years ago suggests wildfires spiked during wetter times, which may have influenced human evolution

We've perhaps been conditioned to not ask too many questions, in case it comes across as rude or prying. But columnist David Robson argues that asking people open-ended questions benefits our wellbeing, and doesn't have to be complicated

Memories in mice persisted even after they lost the connections that we thought were needed for recall, expanding our knowledge of memory in the mammalian brain

Descent passed from mother to daughter rather than from father to son, a study of more than 500 Iron Age individuals from north-east England suggests

Analysis of a mathematical puzzle that Leonhard Euler deemed unsolvable in the 1700s reveals that the crucial ingredient for cracking it after all is quantum entanglement

Photographers in Spain captured spectacular images of the rare alignment of the moon and the sun, as it cast a dark shadow over much of the country

The critical current could remain stable beyond 5°C of warming, but only if the warming happens very slowly 

Almost all mammals give birth rather than laying eggs, and we have new clues about when they began to do so

Another month started almost two weeks ago, so we’ve got a new monthly report from Redox, the general purpose operating system written in Rust. The month of July – it seems the report was published with a bit of a delay, regardless of what the date on their site says – brought improvements to the installer, with new options commonly found in most installers, such as a choice of installation method, network-based installation, and more.

How Komatsu machines help build Atlassian Williams F1 Team’s FW48

The OSNews Fundraiser, to celebrate the fact I posted 20000 stories in 21 years, is still underway. The first major incentive was reached, and I, a long-time Linux user, published my experiences using Windows 11 for a month.

Raymond Chen explains what, exactly, the file winstart.bat in Windows 95 is used for. In Windows 95, you could create a winstart.bat file in your Windows directory. During startup, the virtual machine manager initializes and creates the so-called “System virtual machine” (the “System VM”), which is the virtual machine that all Windows programs run in.

Delphi is still very much a thing, and still very much in active development. The current stewards of Delphi, Embarcadero, released the Delphi 13 Community Edition today. Delphi Community Edition is a full-featured, free edition of Delphi for building native applications with the Delphi language.

Pushing a pram while running may reduce the force produced with each foot strike, decreasing the risk of injuries

OpenAI and its competitors want to dictate the role that artificial intelligence will play in our society – it's time to take back control of the narrative

This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles

Tom Gauld's weekly cartoon

Feedback is a little nonplussed by an experiment that involved wearing (or not wearing) compressing shapewear, and then playing cards

Humans can see water but not air. So can fish see air? And would it be possible to have anti-black holes, and how could we tell if we were looking at one?

Our readers do the maths on what one of their mothers calls the family forest

One reader explains how the moon’s drift will lead to longer (and warmer) days

The slow but steady march to the grave for the Android Open Source Project continues. Every few months Google hammers another big nail in the coffin of Android as an open source effort, and I’ve documented them all here on OSNews (nail, nail, nail, nail, nail), coming to the conclusion long ago that for all intents and purposes, Android is no longer an open source operating system.

The GNOME Shell user interface has mostly seen minor refinements and quality of life updates in recent cycles, but on the design side we’ve explored a lot of longer-term things we’d like to do. Some of these we have relatively complete plans for, others are more vague ideas that need more research and prototyping.

Bacteria-killing phage viruses souped up with DNA-destroying CRISPR appear to have helped clear up a very serious infection caused by antibiotic-resistant E. coli

Having surgery for a heart condition is thought to have triggered an immune response that put the patient into remission for his severe skin cancer, but also caused him to develop a serious allergy to bee stings

Two research teams have independently created devices within which sound waves could be separated by frequency, creating the most complete sound rainbows yet

This was bound to happen. According to a new report from Taiwanese publication United Daily News (UDC,) Microsoft is raising the cost of Windows license fees for hardware makers by a much higher amount than normal.

I found some ambiguous wording in the c89(/c90) standard, where GCC and Clang disagree on the interpretation. It concerns the behavior of implicit function declarations, which were removed in c99, so this was never disambiguated.

Enlightenment desktop is a low on resources desktop environment without sacrificing on visuals. NetBSD support for this BSD-licensed desktop has been left a few years behind. The aim of this project is to port the newest version of the desktop to pkgsrc and commit upstream portability fixes when necessary to ease future versions updates for NetBSD.

Akihabara, Tokyo’s famous “Electric Town,” is overflowing with foreign tourists these days, drawn by anime shops, maid cafes, and duty-free electronics megastores. But there is one storefront most of them walk past without a glance: Akizuki Denshi Tsusho.

Two leg bones found on the seabed near Taiwan have been identified as Denisovans, and their size suggests these hominins stood up to 190 centimetres tall

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

Our understanding of the internal structure of protons is largely based on classical physics, but data compiled from accelerator experiments has uncovered quantum behaviour that has never been seen before

The standard model of physics is one of the most successful scientific theories in existence, but do we need it all? Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein explores whether it’s carrying any excess baggage

Cookies are ancient technology, and in no way necessary of even particularly desirable to track you. Modern fingerprinting doesn’t need them at all. A live demonstration of everything a website learns about you before you click anything with no cookies.

Keeping pets seems to be fairly recent behaviour in the timeline of human evolution. Columnist Michael Marshall turns to the latest research on primates to understand how long we’ve had the impulse to adopt furry friends

Since the 2000s, our light exposure has changed drastically as we make our buildings more energy-efficient. Now, we’re discovering how this may mess with our mitochondria, contributing to diabetes, dementia and more

There are measurable changes in the way we run when we are short of sleep, which give us a clearer picture of how a lack of shut-eye affects our risk of injury

Back in 2014, Microsoft released the source code to the first Windows version of Word, version 1.1a. Now, Justin Marshall has ported this code to modern versions of Windows, so you can run it as if it were any other modern application.

Top supplier of great articles Nicole Branagan is at it again. We’re back into the strip mahjong games today, here going back to 1991. Video System is a company that’s probably best known in retro-gaming circles for Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings, but mahjong games (usually branded Idol Mahjong) were one of their bigger moneymakers.

A salt-loving microorganism found in places like the Dead Sea can not just survive but actively grow in conditions close to those that may be found just under the Martian surface

In an election, how can you make sure that everyone's votes are counted but also kept entirely secret? Quantum mechanics may have the answer

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act keeps delivering for EU citizens. Apple is working on a new feature that will support cross-device copy and paste between iOS devices and Windows PCs. Microsoft asked for the feature using Apple’s EU interoperability request system for developers, which Apple implemented to comply with the Digital Markets Act.

IceWM, the venerable X11 window manager, has put up a new maintenance release, version 4.1.0. It’s got a small number of fixes, two very minor new features, as well a few updated translations. That’s it.

A small trial suggests a supplement containing dead bacteria could offer a cheaper alternative to weight-loss drugs such as semaglutide, but further evidence is needed

An out-of-control SpaceX rocket that crashed into the moon earlier this week did, in fact, leave an impact crater, according to images from a Korea AeroSpace Administration lunar orbiter that caught before-and-after photographs

Researchers are investigating whether artificially thickening ice blockages between Canada and Greenland could prevent huge amounts of sea ice from flowing south to melt

High temperatures and low water levels have forced several countries to shut down nuclear reactors just as citizens turn up their air conditioning, forcing energy prices to spike and raising the threat of blackouts

Why are we so susceptible to clickbait? Columnist Jacob Aron traces it to a surprising source: a mathematical framework that paved the way for much of how the modern world works

Even during a solar eclipse, it isn’t safe to look directly at the sun, but with a proper solar filter or a simple pinhole projector, you can still watch it disappear behind the moon

There’s been a small flurry of articles from a variety of sources, all talking about more or less the same thing: Microsoft is trying to explain why Windows 11 is as difficult to develop as it is, in turn justifying why it’s become such a mess over the years.

Once upon a time in the mysterious lands of Mexico, starting in Fall 1996 and through Spring 1997, I coded a windowed operating system in 32-bit machine code, fit it into a floppy, and jumped in excitement as it boot up.

Two years ago, I was Porting my JavaScript Game Engine to C for No Reason. I have since found a reason: making a new N64 game! The result is Xibalba 64 – a Wolfenstein 3D-like FPS. Modretro agreed to publish the game as a physical launch title for their M64 (a modern N64 clone), complete with cartridge, packaging and manual! ↫ Dominic Szablewski The article details the development process, from setting up the correct tooling to actually getting the game to play on a real Nintendo 64, and everything in between – including optimising the game to get it to run at a steady 60fps.

Carbon savings from driving EVs are so large that it makes sense to scrap a working petrol car to make the switch

An AI model from DeepMind can predict cyclones three days ahead with a level of accuracy that previous models can only hit a day later

This year has left mathematicians reeling as AI models are increasingly solving seemingly intractable maths problems. Terence Tao, the world's leading mathematician, says a rethink of the entire field is the only way out of the crisis 

The widespread belief that some foods benefit from a night in the fridge has been put to the test, and it seems to be true for some curries, but not lasagne

Combining archaeological evidence with ancient DNA and data on past climates shows us how long and winding the story of human evolution is, stretching back millions of years to when the first primates arose

Tribblix, the Illumos distribution focused on giving you a classic UNIX-style experience, has been updated with the release of Milestone 41. According to the release notes, it contains the latest security fixes from Illumos, but beyond that it’s just a number of small point releases for certain components.

A study involving 12,000 adults in the US suggests that taking action to prevent dementia during your 50s can make a big difference later in life

Altering the gut microbiomes of people with peanut allergy using faeces donated from an allergy-free individual improved their peanut tolerance in a clinical trial

The devastating wildfires in Europe demand urgent measures to make landscapes more resilient, but without action to reduce use of fossil fuels, the danger is only going to increase

This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles

Tom Gauld's weekly cartoon

Humans can see water but not air. So can fish see air? And would it be possible to have anti-black holes, and how could we tell if we were looking at one?

Readers continue to give their examples of dogs who do notice passing aircraft – but also put forward some ideas as to why they generally don’t

A reader weighs in on this one – and finds it will depend on how far you’re travelling

Readers debate how the introduction of bicycles and trains will have led to less closely related prospective partners for our ancestors – and consider various royal dynasties from this perspective

It has been assumed for decades that tick and flea treatments for pets pose no threat to wildlife or people, but there’s growing evidence that we have got it wrong

People appear to prefer short stories created by AI over those written by humans. They are also no better than chance at telling which is which

Few things in technology are more complex, convoluted, and riddled with literally decades of drama than the Amiga community. Luckily for all of us, a significant step forward has been made today: several of the key corporate players in the community have struck agreements to settle their legal disputes.

Don’t have enough computing devices on your wish list yet? Do you have a need for a graphing calculator? No? What if it can run Linux and even Windows 10? I see I’ve got your attention. The HP Prime is a graphing calculator on the market since 2013, with a hardware revision in 2018 (the G2 model).

Want to switch to 9front, especially with the new release having just been made available, but really need Wireguard? Fret not! Wireguard is now available on 9front, experimentally.

Today, I wanted to show you one of the most fascinating and surprising operating systems ever created. It’s not another Unix, Linux, or Windows. It is an architecture that went its own way and proved that systems engineering design can look completely different.

The laws of physics seemed to forbid a strange variety of black holes that could have zero temperature. Columnist Jacklin Kwan explores research that shows these strange behemoths can really exist – and how they could test the limits of thermodynamics

Botanists have finally proved what Charles Darwin was unable to nail down – that a genus of plants known to catch insects also digests them, suggesting the extent of plant carnivory has been underestimated

A few years ago, psychologist Sherman Lee experienced a "grief attack". When he set out to study them, he discovered just how powerful and all-consuming grief can be

From which diets work best to the ethics of octopus farming, here’s Liz Else’s round-up of the most interesting popular science books published this month

Lost solar power due to smoke blocking the sun cost Europe and North America nearly $2 billion in 2023 alone

For the first time since records began, there was no rain at all for parts of southern England and Wales in July, in a “truly exceptional” month of heat and sunshine

Jacob Tsimerman won a Fields medal last month – now he is leaving mathematics to work on AI safety

Ten conundrums that stumped human mathematicians for years have been cracked by OpenAI's Astra model, continuing a hot streak of AI-driven breakthroughs that are shaking up the field

The best operating system in the world, 9front, released its latest version, “THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN”. As I’m sure you know, 9front is a fork of plan9, and one that’s actually consistently maintained and developed.

AI chatbots can describe reality in words, but don’t truly understand cause and effect in the real world. Now, a fresh kind of machine intelligence that does just that is emerging

A beach umbrella might protect you from sunburn, but when it comes to keeping you cool, it makes surprisingly little difference

Cameron Kaiser’s articles are always a right treat, and this one’s no different. It’s about running MkLinux on the Apple Workgroup Server, the regular Mac rebadged into a server product and predecessor to Apple’s first real server product, the Apple Network Server running AIX.

Whenever the EU steps in to regulate the big technology companies, the response from news outlets and bloggers (often funded or outright owned by right-wing extremists) is to claim it’s just a bunch of dumb , tech-illiterate bureaucrats telling the vastly more intelligent and superior technology companies what to do.

Beef-liver supplements are said to be more effective at raising iron levels than standard tablets, but is it true? Columnist Alice Klein looks into the evidence behind the claims

NetBSD, the operating system specifically designed to run on anything from a supercomputer to a toothpick, just released version 11.0. There’s a ton of changes and improvements here, such as a brand new port to RISC-V, which supports a number of the more popular RISC-V SoCs (sadly, not the one I have just yet).

I have a policy to effectively never link to YouTube videos. I’ll gladly make an exception for this one. Reflection is one of the most powerful concepts in Computer Science. Unfortunately, not every programming language is blessed enough to have it.

Fascist empires and deadly sea monsters are on offer in the science fiction out this month, says Alison Flood

Tcl, or the “Tool Command Language“, created and released by John Ousterhout in 1990, deserves a place among the greatest products of the human mind. Especially when combined with its better known graphical user interface Toolkit — Tk.

Paradoxically, suppressing wildfires has also made European countries more vulnerable to huge blazes like those seen in France and Spain this week. With global warming also amplifying the danger, some experts are calling for a change of strategy