Why “new” is the new “old”

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iOS 27 is coming soon. There’s a good chance you’ll hate it

“Apple unveiled iOS 27 during its WWDC last week, and there’s a good chance that half of you are going to hate it. The single biggest change in this update is that Siri is going to evolve from an out-of-date phone assistant that doesn’t seem to work half the time to a full conversational chatbot, with hooks throughout the OS. Whether it works great or not, it’s going to make a lot of people mad. AI blowback is real, and it’s here, especially among younger generations…”

Asking for help is the most rational thing you’re not doing

You’d take the car in. You’d see a doctor. You’d call a professional for literally anything else that wasn’t working right. But the brain — the thing running the whole operation — we just expect to troubleshoot itself. BetterHelp is what actually fixing that looks like: a licensed therapist matched to your specific situation, sessions via message, phone, or video whenever your schedule allows, and pricing that doesn’t require a second therapy session to recover from. The only weird part is waiting any longer to try it. [Ad]

New species of dinosaur, a cousin of Velociraptor, probably glided on four ‘wings’ and hunted early birds

“A fossil bed in northwestern China is littered with the remains of hundreds of prehistoric birds — including some whose broken bones were crushed into pellets, similar to those coughed up by modern owls. For years, scientists guessed that a larger predatory animal must have hunted these ancient birds, but they never found direct fossil evidence of this predator. But … researchers announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur from this fossil bed — a cousin of Velociraptor with long feathers on its front and back limbs. Based on the dinosaur’s distinctive arm and shoulder bones, scientists hypothesize that this animal is the missing predator.”

Nothing new here: Another sequel, another lighthouse

“I like Star Wars, but I don’t want to see the new Mandalorian movie. The Devil Wears Prada was fine the first time around, but I don’t need another one. Drake is topping the Billboard Hot 100 again? I’ll pass. I’m tired of the sameness; it’s everywhere. When it comes to music and movies, we’ve been gravitating toward a generic uniformity for decades. (I know this is giving ‘back in my day’ … but I have data!)”

The latest Microsoft apps are no longer a subscription

Somewhere along the way, software forgot it was allowed to just exist on your computer. Office 2024 didn’t get that memo. One payment lands you Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote — installed locally, yours indefinitely — and this version quietly leveled up while everyone was busy arguing about subscriptions. AI-assisted writing in Word, smarter Dynamic Arrays in Excel, chart insights that used to require a consultant. The apps got better. The pricing model stayed the way it should’ve all along. [Ad]

Why we crave company

“If you watch the body language of a mouse who’s reunited with one of her sisters after five days in a cage alone, you might suspect you know what she’s feeling. … She looks like she’s feeling what you or I feel when meeting a long-lost friend or a family member — maybe with more sniffing. She looks like she’s been lonely. Loneliness isn’t just for humans, and neither are its harms… Among humans, ‘you can feel lonely at a party, or you can feel fine alone in your office,’ says Kay Tye, a neuroscientist … Tye and others think that an animal’s need to balance time alone and time with others represents a kind of homeostasis: an equilibrium that’s critical for survival. Today, they are on a hunt to find where, in the brain, this equilibrium is controlled — and hoping their work will hold dividends for lonely humans.”

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