Jury trials scrapped for crimes with sentences of less than three years
The reforms are being brought in to tackle unprecedented delays in the Crown Court. ⌘ Read more

National Guard shooting suspect charged with murder
According to a criminal complaint, Rahmanullah Lakanwal shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he fired and was reloading when a Guard member shot him. ⌘ Read more

Ancient human artefacts found near caves in Arabian desert
Today, the deserts of the Arabian peninsula are inhospitable – but 100,000 years ago, the area was full of animals and ancient humans ⌘ Read more

‘We will never get justice,’ say Hillsborough families as report finds fundamental police failures
A report finds 12 ex-police officers would have faced gross misconduct cases over the disaster under today’s laws. ⌘ Read more

Quarter of police forces lack basic policies on sexual offences, Sarah Everard inquiry finds
The report, four years after the 33-year-old’s murder, says urgent action is needed to prevent violent, sexual attacks against women. ⌘ Read more

‘We will never get justice,’ say Hillsborough families as report finds fundamental police failures
A report finds 12 ex-police officers would have faced gross misconduct cases over the disaster under today’s laws. ⌘ Read more

Sabrina Carpenter and Franklin the Turtle in tiff with Trump administration over use of work
Trump administration officials used Carpenter’s song and Franklin the Turtle’s image in social media posts about deportation and killing drug traffickers. ⌘ Read more

Search for British hiker who went missing in Romanian mountains
George Smyth’s mother says “the thought of life without him is unbearable”. ⌘ Read more

Why quantum mechanics says the past isn’t real
The famous double-slit experiment brings into question the very nature of matter. Its cousin, the quantum eraser experiment, makes us question the very existence of time – and how much we can manipulate it ⌘ Read more

‘We will never get justice,’ say Hillsborough families as report finds fundamental police failures
A report finds 12 ex-police officers would have faced gross misconduct cases over the disaster under today’s laws. ⌘ Read more

Black hole entropy hints at a surprising truth about our universe
Two clashing ideas about disorder inside black holes now point to the same strange conclusions, and it could reshape the foundations of how we think about space and time ⌘ Read more

Asteroid Bennu carries all the ingredients for life as we know it
We knew from prior analyses that a distant asteroid sampled in 2020 carried all but one of the molecules needed to kick-start life, and researchers have just found the missing ingredient: sugar ⌘ Read more

What would Russia’s inability to launch crewed missions mean for ISS?
Russia’s only launch site capable of sending humans to orbit has suffered serious damage that may take two years to fix. Will NASA keep supporting the ISS without Russian involvement, or is this the end for the space station? ⌘ Read more

Coral reefs have fuelled severe global warming in Earth’s past
Over the past 250 million years, periods when coral reef growth has peaked have coincided with big rises in sea temperatures ⌘ Read more

We now have a greater understanding of how exercise slows cancer
Tumour growth is reduced by exercise due to a shift in the body’s metabolism that means muscle cells outcompete cancer cells in the race to get sugar to grow ⌘ Read more

A sinister, deadly brain protein could reveal the origins of all life
We have long struggled to determine how the first living organisms on Earth came together. Now, surprising evidence hints that poorly understood prions may have been the vital missing ingredient ⌘ Read more

Man unexpectedly cured of HIV after stem cell transplant
A handful of people with HIV have been cured after receiving HIV-resistant stem cells – but a man who received non-resistant stem cells is also now HIV-free ⌘ Read more

The best new science fiction books of December 2025
From a new collection of shorter fiction by Brandon Sanderson to Simon Stålenhag’s new work, via a Stranger Things novel, December’s new sci-fi features some compelling and intriguing offerings ⌘ Read more

Was a little-known culture in Bronze Age Turkey a major power?
Archaeologists have gathered evidence from hundreds of Bronze Age sites in western Turkey that could be remnants of a civilisation that has been largely overlooked ⌘ Read more

Steam Machine, Continued Open-Source Rust Usage & Linux Kernel Happenings In November
It was an eventful past month with Valve announcing the new Steam Machine, a lot of new Linux kernel activity, the continued increase of Rust programming language adoption by open-source projects, a lot of fun hardware benchmarks, and more. There were 283 original news articles on Phoronix the past month about Linux/open-source software and hardware plus another 18 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. … ⌘ Read more

‘Crime Rings Enlist Hackers To Hijack Trucks’
It’s “a complex mix of internet access and physical execution,” says the chief informance security officer at Cequence Security.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 summarizes this article from The Wall Street Journal:

By breaking into carriers’ online systems, cyber-powered criminals are making off with truckloads of electronics, beverages and other goods In the most recent tactics id … ⌘ Read more

Blocage de Shein, exemptions pour Iliad : connivence à Choose France
Un article de Henry Bonner Le gouvernement cherche des prétextes pour un bannissement de Shein, la plateforme de e-commerce. Des entreprises du secteur du vêtement font pression pour la création de taxes, et une interdiction de ces plateformes. Cependant, le succès du e-commerce vient des avantages pour les consommateurs. Ils gagnent accès à plus de […] ⌘ Read more

Why Google’s custom AI chips are shaking up the tech industry
Google is reportedly in talks to sell its tensor processing units – a type of computer chip specially designed for AI – to other tech companies, a move that could unsettle the dominant chip-maker Nvidia ⌘ Read more

Black Friday Reminder For Those Hating Ads But Loving Linux Hardware/Software
As the one and last friendly reminder, if you enjoy the daily and original content found on Phoronix.com but not liking ads and wanting to view multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and more: the 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Week deal is ending Monday to help support the site while enjoying a discounted rate… ⌘ Read more

Upheavals to the oral microbiome in pregnancy may be behind tooth loss
Dental problems often arise or get worse during pregnancy, and a new study hints that rapid changes to the oral microbiome at this time could be at least partly to blame ⌘ Read more

Africa’s forests are now emitting more CO2 than they absorb
Logging and mining are destroying swathes of the Congo rainforest, with the result that African forests went from being  a carbon sink to a carbon source in 2010 to 2017 ⌘ Read more

Plastic can be programmed to have a lifespan of days, months or years
Inspired by natural polymers like DNA, chemists have devised a way to engineer plastic so it breaks down when it is no longer needed, rather than polluting the environment ⌘ Read more

Our verdict on sci-fi novel Every Version of You: We (mostly) loved it
New Scientist Book Club members share their thoughts on our November read, Grace Chan’s Every Version of You ⌘ Read more

Read an extract from The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading Iain M. Banks’s classic sci-fi novel The Player of Games. In this extract, we meet protagonist Gurgeh for the first time ⌘ Read more

Why sci-fi novelist Iain M. Banks was an ‘astounding’ world-builder
The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading the late Iain M. Banks’s Culture novel The Player of Games. Fellow science fiction author Bethany Jacobs reveals how his work inspired her ⌘ Read more

I’m kind of tired of late of telling support folks, for example, ym registrar, how to do their fucking goddamn jobs 🤦‍♂️

Hi James,

Thank you for your patience.

There are several reasons why a .au domain registration might fail or be cancelled, including inaccurate registrant information, ineligibility for a .au domain licence, or issues related to Australian law.

For a full list of possible reasons, please see this article: https://support.onlydomains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/6415278890141-Why-has-my-au-domain-registration-been-cancelled

If you believe none of these reasons apply to your case, please let us know so we can investigate further.

Best regards,

Yes, so tell me support person, why the fuck did it fail?! 🤬

Supermassive dark matter stars may be lurking in the early universe
Stars powered by dark matter instead of nuclear fusion could solve several mysteries of the early universe, and we may have spotted the first hints that they are real ⌘ Read more

Black Friday Reminder For Those Hating Ads But Loving Linux Hardware/Software
As the one and last friendly reminder, if you enjoy the daily and original content found on Phoronix.com but not liking ads and wanting to view multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and more: the 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Week deal is ending Monday to help support the site while enjoying a discounted rate… ⌘ Read more

Origin story of domestic cats rewritten by genetic analysis
Domestic cats originated in North Africa and spread to Europe in the past 2000 years, according to DNA evidence, while in China a different species of cat lived alongside people much earlier ⌘ Read more

Physicists have worked out a universal law for how objects shatter
Whether it is a cube of sugar or a chunk of a mineral, a mathematical analysis can identify how many fragments of each size any brittle object will break into ⌘ Read more

Emergency response needed to prevent climate breakdown, warn experts
Scientists sounded the alarm on the dire consequences of continued inaction at a briefing in London, warning that we could be heading for “unprecedented societal and ecological collapse” ⌘ Read more

Warming and droughts led to collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation
Hotter temperatures and a series of droughts in what is now Pakistan and India fragmented one of the world’s major early civilisations, providing a “warning shot” for today ⌘ Read more

Deadly fungus makes sick frogs jump far, possibly to find mates
Chytrid fungus is a scourge to global amphibian populations, but before it kills some frogs, it can produce symptoms that may help the infected animals find mates and spread the fungus further ⌘ Read more

Monthly injection could replace daily steroid pills for severe asthma
Daily steroid pills are often necessary for severe cases of asthma, but they raise the risk of several serious conditions. Now, scientists have shown that a monthly antibody injection can eliminate the need for the pills ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net AI is slot machines for coders:

• “Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%–AI tooling slowed developers down.” https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
  
• “Stack Overflow data reveals the hidden productivity tax of ‘almost right’ AI code”: https://venturebeat.com/ai/stack-overflow-data-reveals-the-hidden-productivity-tax-of-almost-right-ai-code
  

The same intermittent reward operant conditioning that gets people addicted to gambling and thinking that if they follow certain rituals they’ll win “next time” drives people’s beliefs that AI tools are making them more productive when they’re making them less productive. I’m going to guess that a side effect of this is that people think they’re typing less when in the longer term they’re typing the same amount or more when you factor in the productivity loss (as far as I’ve read the studies don’t measure this so I’m only guessing).

People are also being rapidly de-skilled by this technology: the more they use it, the more their actual skills atrophy. “Continuous exposure to AI might reduce the ADR (adesoma detection rate) of standard non-AI assisted colonoscopy, suggesting a negative effect on endoscopist behaviour.” (science speak for saying that radiologists get worse at seeing tumors in scans once they’ve used AI): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(25)00133-5/abstract

Nobody who cares about the future should be using this stuff for anything.

More Than Half of New Articles On the Internet Are Being Written By AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation: The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI. Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study sho … ⌘ Read more

Easter Island statues may have been built by small independent groups
Mapping of the main quarry on Easter Island where giant statues were carved has uncovered evidence that the monuments may not have been created under the direction of a single chief ⌘ Read more

Cold-water swimming has benefits for the brain as well as the body
There is a growing body of research on the physical benefits of going for a dip in chilly water, but now researchers are starting to find that cold-water swimming may also be reshaping our brains for the better in lasting ways ⌘ Read more

The science of swimming trunks – including tightness analysis
Feedback dives into a new piece of research on the merits of swimming briefs or looser swimming shorts – and raises an eyebrow at its conclusion ⌘ Read more

Pandas use tools to scratch thanks to a strange evolutionary quirk
Captive giant pandas have been seen breaking off twigs and bamboo pieces to scratch hard-to-reach spots, using a crude opposable thumb that other bears don’t have ⌘ Read more

A revolutionary way to map our bodies is helping cure deadly diseases
New tools that create ultra-precise maps of our tissues are transforming our ability to diagnose and cure once-fatal illnesses ⌘ Read more

Ancient human foot bones shed light on how two species coexisted
Scientists have finally assigned foot bones found in 2009 to an ancient human species, and the move suggests that different types of hominins lived close by in harmony ⌘ Read more

We might have just seen the first hints of dark matter
Unexplained gamma ray radiation coming from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy could be produced by self-annihilating dark matter particles – but the idea requires further investigation ⌘ Read more

We may need a fourth law of thermodynamics for living systems
The laws of thermodynamics don’t accurately account for the complex processes in living cells – do we need a new one to accurately measure the ways living systems are out of equilibrium? ⌘ Read more

The long-overlooked insects that could save our crops
Hoverflies, often mistaken for bees and wasps, pollinate three quarters of our crops. Now we’re discovering we can train them to be even more efficient ⌘ Read more