Sci-fi show The Miniature Wife underwhelms – despite the big names
Elizabeth Banks stars as an author shrunk by her scientist husband Matthew Macfadyen in this major new series – but it fails to live up to its promise, finds Josh Bell
Mysterious 'compound X' clears toxic Parkinson’s proteins from brain
A drug known only as compound X helped to remove the problematic proteins associated with Parkinson's disease from the brains of mice, and improved their balance and mobility
Emperor penguins added to endangered list after rapid decline
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has updated the Red List status for three of Antarctica’s most famous species after a dire assessment of their prospects under climate change
Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah ported to Nintendo Wii
Since its launch in 2007, the Wii has seen several operating systems ported to it: Linux, NetBSD, and most-recently, Windows NT. Today, Mac OS X joins that list. In this post, I’ll share how I ported the first version of Mac OS X, 10.0 Cheetah, to the Nintendo Wii.
Key ocean current is slowing at locations around the Atlantic
Measurements by buoys at four latitudes in the western Atlantic provide the strongest evidence yet that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening
We urgently need to prepare for quantum computers breaking encryption
The maths problems that secure your online bank transactions and emails may soon be undermined by quantum technology. It’s imperative we act now, before it’s too late
Two excellent new sci-fi novels tackle robots in very different ways
Luminous by Silvia Park and Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer are both thoughtful and well-written science fiction novels, featuring robots in richly realised worlds. But there the similarities end, says Emily H.
Stunning photographs show the dynamic patterns of the natural world
A new book from photographer Jon McCormack collects his shots of patterns in nature from around the world, from flamingoes to icebergs
What to read this week: Beyond Inheritance by Roxanne Khamsi
A fresh and important book reveals the messy reality of our ever-mutating cells – and why the quest to defeat ageing is futile, says Michael Le Page
Is this the most niche scientific tourist attraction in the world?
Feedback is delighted by the discovery of a very specific scientific sculpture park in China – and wonders if readers can top it
Quantum entanglement can be measured in solids for the first time
A method that relies on hitting materials with neutrons can measure how much quantum entanglement hides within them, which could enable new kinds of quantum technology
Disappearing megafauna may have prompted a stone tool revolution
Massive herbivores became scarce in the Middle East about 200,000 years ago, and this coincided with a shift towards smaller, lighter toolkits in the archaeological record
Why early humans radically changed their toolkits 200,000 years ago
A decline in ancient megafauna in the Middle East coincided with a shift towards smaller, lighter toolkits in the archaeological record – though scientists are still in debate about why
The invisibility cloak inventor now has better tricks up his sleeve
John Pendry is known for creating an invisibility cloak. Twenty years on, he has used the same principles to fashion an even more powerful kind of metamaterial that can teach us about the wild frontiers of physics
Particles seen emerging from empty space for first time
By tracing the origins of an unusual, short-lived particle, researchers have gathered some of the strongest evidence yet that mass can emerge from fluctuations in the vacuum
Why The Double Helix is such an extraordinary but infuriating book
James Watson’s The Double Helix is probably one of the greatest science books of all time – but Michael Le Page finds he can’t recommend that anyone actually reads it
How a century-long argument over light’s true nature came to an end
Two of the forefathers of quantum theory, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, had a famous argument over whether light is a wave or a particle. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan finds that the matter has been settled once and for all
The most stunning pictures from Artemis II’s flyby of the moon
The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission have captured extraordinary views of the moon, including close-ups of the far side and a breathtaking solar eclipse
I don’t see images in my head. Can training give me a mind’s eye?
Training programmes for people with aphantasia – the inability to create mental images – are challenging neuroscientists' understanding of how we create thoughts
Migraines could be treated by ramping up the brain's cleaning system
Amplifying the brain's waste disposal system seems to clear a substance that drives migraines, relieving some of the pain associated with the condition
Are manure digesters a real solution to dairy farm emissions?
Anaerobic digesters converting manure to biogas reduce methane emissions from livestock, but incentives for them have encouraged factory farms to get bigger
Plan 9 is a uniquely complete operating system
From 2024, but still accurate and interesting: Plan 9 is unique in this sense that everything the system needs is covered by the base install. This includes the compilers, graphical environment, window manager, text editors, ssh client, torrent client, web server, and the list goes on.
Anos: a hobby microkernel operating system written in C
Anos is a modern, opinionated, non-POSIX operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like GNU-Linux) for x86_64 PCs and RISC-V machines. Anos currently comprises the STAGE3 microkernel, SYSTEM user-mode supervisor, and a base set of servers implementing the base of the operating system.
The 499th patch for 2.11BSD released
This year sees 35 years since 2.11BSD was announced on March 14, 1991 – itself a slightly late celebration of 20 years of the PDP-11 – and January 2026 brought what looks to be the venerable 16-bit OS’s biggest ever patch! Much of the 1.3 MB size is due to Anders Magnusson, well-known for his work on NetBSD and the Portable C Compiler.
The Artemis II astronauts have flown around the moon
Four NASA astronauts have now travelled further from Earth than any humans before them, as they flew around the moon during the Artemis II mission on 6 April
KDE is bringing back its classic Oxygen and Air themes
Anyone remember the KDE 4.0 themes Oxygen and Air? Well, several KDE developers have been working tirelessly to bring them back, which means they’re patching it up, fixing bugs, and generally making these classic themes work well in the current releases of KDE Plasma 6.
“I used AI. It worked. I hated it.”
This is a great post, but obviously it hasn’t convinced me: The folks waving their arms and yelling about recent models’ capabilities have a point: the thing works. This project finished in three weeks.
Iodised salt has become uncool but many of us need to eat more iodine
Iodine deficiency is on the rise among people in the UK, the US and Australia. A century ago this led to drops in IQ, height and thyroid health – and the modern fancy salt fad may be leading to a resurgence, says columnist Alice Klein
Our fancy salt obsession is harming our health
Cornish sea salt crystals, pink Himalayan rock salt, smoked salt flakes – the use of gourmet salts is on the rise. But columnist Alice Klein finds it may be leading to a resurgence in iodine deficiency, with harmful consequences
We're solving the fundamental mystery of how reality is glued together
For decades, scientists have tried and failed to explain how the force that binds the heart of atoms together really works. But new mathematical tools are finally prising the problem open
Novel approach to clearing brain waste shows promise for Alzheimer's
Boosting the brain's waste-disposal system is increasingly showing promise for Alzheimer's disease, with a study now suggesting that a novel approach eases brain deficits and symptoms associated with the condition
Adobe secretly modifies your hosts file for the stupidest reason
If you’re using Windows or macOS and have Adobe Creative Cloud installed, you may want to take a peek at your hosts file. It turns out Adobe adds a bunch of entries into the hosts file, for a very stupid reason.
TinyOS: ultra-lightweight RTOS for IoT devices
An ultra-lightweight real-time operating system for resource-constrained IoT and embedded devices. Kernel footprint under 10 KB, 2 KB minimum RAM, preemptive priority-based scheduling. ↫ TinyOS GitHub page Written in C, open source, and supports ARM and RISC-V.
Redox gets new CPU scheduler
Another major improvement in Redox: a brand new scheduler which improves performance under load considerably. We have replaced the legacy Round Robin scheduler with a Deficit Weighted Round Robin scheduler.
Open source office suites erupt in forking and licensing drama
You’d think if there was one corner of the open source world where you wouldn’t find drama it’d be open source office suites, but it turns out we could not have been more wrong. First, there’s The Document Foundation, stewards of LibreOffice, ejecting a ton of LibreOffice contributors.
How Microsoft vaporized a trillion dollars
This is the first of a series of articles in which you will learn about what may be one of the silliest, most preventable, and most costly mishaps of the 21st century, where Microsoft all but lost OpenAI, its largest customer, and the trust of the US government.
Big-endian testing with QEMU
I assume I don’t have to explain the difference between big-endian and little-endian systems to the average OSNews reader, and while most systems are either dual-endian or (most likely) little-endian, it’s still good practice to make sure your code works on both.
We may have seen a 'dirty fireball' star explosion for the first time
An incredibly powerful flash of X-rays spotted by the Einstein Probe telescope appears to be a kind of explosion first theorised more than 30 years ago
How worried should you be about an AI apocalypse?
Fears that artificial intelligence could rise up to wipe out humanity are understandable given our steady diet of sci-fi stories depicting just that, but what is the real risk? Matthew Sparkes looks at what the experts say
Multipurpose anti-viral pill may treat colds, norovirus, flu and covid
AI predicted that a forgotten breast cancer drug could be repurposed to treat many respiratory and gastrointestinal viruses, and subsequent animal tests suggests it may be right
How a DIY worm farm can compost food scraps, paper or a whole kangaroo
For those who want a little help composting, take a cue from James Woodford’s experience raising worms – both the small colony of wrigglers he keeps in a sensible bin in his city garden and the dumpster-sized worm farm he has that can turn even animal carcasses into nutrient-dense soil