FRIDAY, 02 JANUARY 2026, 22:23
New year plant hunt shows rising temperatures are shifting natural cycles of wildflowers such as daisies
Daisies and dandelions are among hundreds of native plant species blooming in the UK, in what scientists have called a “visible signal” of climate breakdown disrupting the natural world.
A Met Office analysis of data from the annual new year’s plant hunt over the past nine years found an...
MacRumors: Apple is not expected to release a standard iPhone 18 model this year, according to a growing number of reports that suggest the company is planning a significant change to its long-standing annual iPhone launch cycle. Despite the immense success of the iPhone 17 in 2025, the iPhone 18 is not expected to arrive until the spring of 2027, leaving the iPhone 17 in the lineup as the...
Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare halted production of the Vision Pro headset at the start of 2025, according to market research firm IDC, after the device shipped 390,000 units during its 2024 launch year. The $3,499 headset has also seen its digital advertising budget cut by more than 95% year to date in the US and UK, according to market intelligence group Sensor Tower. IDC...
Every human body contains a small population of cells that are not genetically its own — cells that crossed the placenta during pregnancy and that persist for decades after birth. These “microchimeric” cells, named after the lion-goat-serpent hybrid of Greek mythology, have been found in every organ studied so far, though they are exceedingly rare: one such cell exists for every 10,000 to 1...
Costco’s consistency — from its $1.50 hot dog and drink combo to its functional shopping carts and satisfied employees — has produced what The Atlantic calls a “cultlike loyalty” among members at more than 600 locations across the U.S. Its annual membership costs $65. The model traces back to Fedco, a nonprofit wholesale collective for federal employees founded in Los Angeles in the 1940s....
Iran is offering to sell advanced weapons systems including ballistic missiles, drones and warships to foreign governments for cryptocurrency, in a bid to use digital assets to bypass western financial controls. From a report: Iran’s Ministry of Defence Export Center, known as Mindex, says it is prepared to negotiate military contracts that allow payment in digital currencies, as well as...
Three decades after RFC 1883 promised to future-proof the internet by expanding the available pool of IP addresses from around 4.3 billion to over 340 undecillion, IPv6 has yet to achieve the dominance its creators envisioned. Data from Google, APNIC and Cloudflare analyzed by The Register shows less than half of all internet users rely on IPv6 today. “IPv6 was an extremely conservative...
An anonymous reader shares a report: Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn’t even work as a national ID. But that’s what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful...
Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we examine how the White House’s war on vaccines has left the future of a key technology uncertain and up for grabs
The late scientist and thinker Donald Braben argued that 20th-century breakthroughs arose from scientists being free to pursue bold ideas without pressure for quick results or rigid...
As the calendar flips to January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 are entering the US public domain alongside sound recordings from 1925, making them free to copy, share, remix and build upon without permission or licensing fees. The literary haul includes William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Hammett’s full novel The Maltese Falcon, Agatha Christie’s first Miss Marple...
Peter Foreshaw Brookes says worry about falling sperm counts is misplaced
The Italian “demographic winter” has a number of causes, but rising male biological infertility is not one (A child is born: Italians celebrate village’s first baby in 30 years, 26 December).
A lot of worry about falling sperm counts has been generated by some studies, but a more recent meta‑analysis found, through...
The European Space Agency has acknowledged yet another security incident after a cybercriminal posted an offer on BreachForums the day after Christmas claiming to have stolen over 20GB of data including source code, confidential documents, API tokens and credentials. The attacker claims they gained access to ESA-linked external servers on December 18 and remained connected for about a week,...
Mark Thomson, a professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Cambridge, takes over as CERN’s director general this week, and one of his first major decisions during his five-year tenure will be shutting down the Large Hadron Collider for an extended upgrade. The shutdown starts in June to make way for the high-luminosity LHC — a major overhaul involving powerful new...
Exclusive: Identifying teenagers at risk could help prevent organ damage, strokes and heart attacks in early adulthood, doctors say
Leading doctors have called for a national UK programme to monitor schoolchildren for high blood pressure amid concerns that rising rates in adolescents will increase cases of organ damage, strokes and heart attacks.
Rates of high blood pressure have nearly doubled...
Instagram head Adam Mosseri closed out 2025 by acknowledging what many have long suspected: the era of trusting photographs as accurate records of reality is over, and the platform he runs will need to fundamentally adapt to an age of “infinite synthetic content.” In a slideshow posted to Instagram, Mosseri wrote that for most of his life he could safely assume photographs or videos were...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: A long stretch of curb in San Francisco’s Mission District might contain a whole menagerie of parked vehicles: hatchbacks, SUVs, dusty pick-ups, chic Teslas. And recently, Waymo robotaxis. That’s what Kyle Grochmal saw walking through the northeast Mission District on Monday afternoon. Cutting down York Street, he glimpsed a...
If you’re ready to start tracking your weight, BMI, and other health data on your phone, we’ve weighed in on some great options.
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Whether you want to run a marathon or learn to play the guitar, here’s how to set yourself up for success.
Whether you’re skiing in the backcountry or trampolining in the backyard, we have an activity tracker for you.
After years of hype about generative AI increasing productivity and making lives easier, 2025 was the year erotic chatbots defined AI’s narrative.
Our reviewer optimized his morning cup of coffee with creamer substitutes that promise health benefits and mental clarity.