Rising costs, shifting habits, and post-pandemic pressures are accelerating the decline of nightclubs, live music venues, and pubs, leaving cultural and economic voids in towns and cities across the UKSource: ShutterstockAt the current rate of closures, all major UK nightclubs could vanish by December 2029, according to a stark warning from the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA).The NTIAs Last Night Out campaign, launched last year, highlights the existential threat facing the UKs night-time economy, which has already lost 37% of its clubs since March 2020. The ongoing decline in nightclubs, live music venues, and pubs is reshaping the cultural and economic fabric of towns and cities, with wide-ranging implications for the built environment.The challenges faced by these venues have been compounded by the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, soaring energy costs, inflation and shifts in consumer behaviour. Research from the NTIA shows that three nightclubs per week more than 150 per year have closed since the pandemic began.Michael Kill, CEO of the NTIA, warned: We are witnessing the systematic dismantling of the night-time economy. Without urgent intervention, December 31, 2029, will be the last night out, and the end of a clubbing era that has defined generations.This NTIA points out that the crisis goes beyond nightclubs. Grassroots live music venues and pubs many housed in historic buildings are also under significant strain. Rising rents and the cost-of-living crisis have hit small, independent operators the hardest. According to the NTIA, nearly 40% of grassroots music venues operated at a loss in 2023, with many reducing live music programming or closing entirely. Similarly, data from CGA, a hospitality consultancy, shows that pubs and bars have seen a 43.6% decline in premises over the past 20 years.According to data from the NTIA, in 2005, the country boasted over 3,000 nightclubs, but by June 2023, only 851 remained. Live music venues also saw a sharp drop, from 960 in 2022 to 835 in 2023. Meanwhile, the number of pubs shrank from 51,500 in 2003 to 39,933 in 2023.> Also read:MOTH Club at risk as Hackney housing plans spark controversyMany in the industry argue that the loss of nightlife spaces is diminishing the vibrancy of urban areas, potentially weakening their appeal as cultural hubs. They contend that venues are not solely places for entertainment but also serve as incubators of creativity, community, and social interaction. According to these perspectives, closures risk creating voids in town centres and high streets, with concerns about the impact on local economies and the future of historic buildings that may remain vacant or underused.Source: Google Street ViewThe Crown Hotel in Station Street, Birmingham. The former live music venue hosted early performances by Black Sabbath and has been closed since 2014For architects and urban designers, these closures present complex challenges. Many night-time venues operate in historically or culturally significant buildings that can be difficult to repurpose. Some former pubs and nightclubs are converted into residential units, but the loss of social spaces can diminish the broader identity of an area. In other cases, venues are left derelict, contributing to urban decline.Last year, Birminghams Crown Hotel, a historic pub famed for hosting early performances by Black Sabbath, was awarded Grade II-listed status in an effort to safeguard the site from what many saw as the looming threat of residential redevelopment. While the listing has increased the likelihood of preserving the buildings architectural and cultural heritage, the pub has remained unused since 2014. Proposals to revitalise it as a cultural venue fell through amidst the city councils ongoing financial struggles, leaving its future uncertain despite its newly recognised status.The declining number of nighttime venues and clubs highlights the growing tension between new residential developments in urban areas and the preservation of cultural spaces. The controversy surrounding Hackneys MOTH Club where nearly 14,000 people have signed a petition against two proposed adjacent housing developments underscores the challenges of balancing Londons housing needs with its night-time economy.> Also read:Black Sabbath pub gets grade II listingSacha Lord, night time economy advisor for Greater Manchester, highlighted the broader impact: The night-time economy has been an integral part of our cultural and economic history. Its more than just a night out; its where friendships are forged, creativity flourishes and local economies thrive. The current trajectory spells disaster not only for the businesses themselves but for the communities they serve.The economic pressures on venues have grown significantly in recent years. Inflation has driven up energy prices and rents, while consumers are increasingly cautious about discretionary spending. The NTIAs 2024 report notes that despite a rebound in attendance for live music events post-pandemic, smaller venues have struggled to cover rising costs. Meanwhile, pubs and bars are grappling with changing consumer preferences, with younger demographics favouring experience-led or food-centric venues over traditional drinking establishments.The NTIA and other industry bodies are calling for urgent government action to prevent further closures. Proposed measures include business rates relief, VAT reductions and recognition of night-time venues as cultural institutions on par with museums and galleries. Michael Kill stressed the importance of immediate support: The loss of our venues means the loss of jobs, culture and a vital part of the UKs social fabric.> Also read:Ian Chalk Architects submits plans for Troxy restoration and new hotel

Freshplans have been submitted for a development on top of Southwark Underground station.Source: AHMMThe proposed developmentHelical and Places for London, the property company for Transport for London, are proposing to build a 15 storey student accommodation tower.The pair agreed a joint venture partnership in late summer 2023 for the redevelopment of three over-station sites at Southwark, Bank and Paddington.Located on the corner of Blackfriars Road and The Cut, the Southwark site had an existing planning permission, secured in July 2022, for a 17-storey commercial office building designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM).There was also a proposal for a new 14 storey tower comprising 25 new affordable homes designed by Bell Phillips architects,The replacement PBSA scheme, also designed by AHMM, is a complete departure from the previous designs andwill comprise 429 students room and double height amenity spaces running all the way up the building.Instead of subsidising a proportion of the student room, the developer proposes to meet affordable requirements by providing 44 conventional affordable homes.These will be provided in a standalone nine-storey building on land west of Joan Street.A community space is proposed on the southern part of the ground floor of this building, facing out onto The Cut.Source: AHMMThe previously consented schemeThe project team includes Gardiner & Theobald, Rapleys and Aecom. Other firms involved include Heyne Tillett Steel, Studio GB, Hoare Lea, Curtins and Mace.Southwark station was designed by Sir Richard MacCormac of MacCormac, Jamieson & Pritchard Architects and completed in 1999.

I'm a serious foodie but a laughable cook. Thankfully, I live in New York City, where it's cool not to cook and there are endless options for eating out. I'm spoiled for culinary choice, with some of the best restaurants in the world within walking distance of my home.I've tried to re-create my favorite food but fall short with even the simplest dishes. So when I heard there was an artificial intelligence app that would turn any photo into a recipe, I had to try it.SideChef's RecipeGen AI app is a home cooking and online grocery platform. The new beta AI feature allows cooks (or wannabe cooks) to take a photo of any dish at a restaurant or on social media, and it promises to instantly generate a step-by-step recipe. I wanted to see how accurate the ingredients were and how close it could get to a restaurant meal I recently had.SideChef is an award-winning shoppable recipe platform that has been in the market since 2013, and its RecipeGen AI feature launched this month as a step-by-step home cooking app. It's free to download and use.Here goes!From sous-chef to SideChef Upgrade your inbox Get cnet insider From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated. The setup was simple. I downloaded the SideChef app on my phone and clicked on Add, then Generate Recipe From Photo. You can either take a photo directly in the app or choose an image from your library.To test out SideChef's accuracy, I wanted to try two methods:Upload a photo of a meal I'd had at arestaurant.Upload a photo of a meal I'd had athome(because I know exactly what I put in it).For the restaurant meal, I chose a beginner-friendly brunch dish to make it easy for SideChef to decipher. We'd brunched at Malibu Farm on a recent trip to California, where they put a fresh spin on breakfast staples like sweet butter and pillowy sourdough. Amanda Smith/CNETI checked the menu to see what the ingredients were, so I could cross-check better: "scramble - sourdough focaccia and breakfast potatoes with a choice of strawberry or basil butter. Kale, spinach, ricotta, eggs and bacon."This is what SideChef came up with: Right off the bat, I was disappointed in the lack of attention to detail. The dish didn't have red bell peppers, green bell peppers, onion or potato seasoning. I don't think it had milk either, but SideChef included it. It also missed the leading flavor profiles -- strawberry butter, ricotta cheese and the sourdough focaccia.To give SideChef the benefit of the doubt, it's hard to distinguish the sourdough focaccia because the photo doesn't show the dimpled top of the bread -- but it didn't even list sourdough.It might've also been hard for SideChef to spot ricotta in the eggs (mistaking the creaminess for milk). It didn't even try with the strawberry butter, prompting me to buy regular butter instead. No, I want my bougie strawberry butter. At this point, I felt like SideChef was more interested in using AI to get an affiliate commission through Walmart (the fulfillment partner).Before I moved onto my home-cooked recipe, I tried another restaurant dish photo to test its culinary capabilities.This time, ramen!I uploaded this photo: Amanda Smith/CNETIt was "thinking" for about 15 seconds, then I got an error. I tried again, as advised, but no luck.Alright, SideChef, let's try this a different way. I picked my favorite dish my wife makes: sweet potato gnocchi with sausage! Amanda Smith/CNETI know the exact ingredients because she made a video about it:Sweet potatoEggFlourSausageMushroomsButterBrothParmesanHere goes! Now we're cooking.It did a lot better this time. It got the main ingredients, but it added sun-dried tomatoes, likely because we had basil on it.With the ingredients 90% there, I checked how the app suggested I cook it and how it was different to how we actually did it.SideChef suggested: SideChef actually made the recipe more complicated than it needed to be. It's a simple seven steps:Heat up the sweet potato, slice it down the middle, remove the jacket and mash it in a bowl.Add one egg and whisk.Add in a cup of flour and mix.Cut the sweet potato dough into four pieces, roll each one into a thin rope, then cut into little gnocchi pieces.Cook the sausage over the frying pan. Add mushrooms, butter and broth.Boil the gnocchi, then add it to the frying pan to crunch it up a little.Sprinkle with parmesan.In SideChef's recipe, it didn't specify to remove the sweet potato jacket or clearly instruct how to prepare it. It advised us to bake the gnocchi, but we boiled it. Other than that, it was 70% there.The chef's kiss?It depends on the recipe. It has a hard time with nuance and, like other AI tools, tends to make it up if it's unsure. It's a handy little app that could be used to inspire new ideas and ingredient concoctions or if you're in a restaurant and don't want to bother the waiter with dish details.But for people with an ounce of skill in the kitchen, SideChef probably doesn't pose much use -- especially for cooks like my wife who wing it and feel creatively confined following recipes, let alone AI.

If you've ever needed to get somewhere in a hurry, you've probably relied onGoogle Mapson your smartphone. Specifically, Street View, Google Maps' first-person perspective option that uses photos taken by Google itself, is one of the best ways to help you get around town with visual cues. It's an immersive, 3D map of the real world.Street View is so ubiquitous that you've likely seenGoogle's camera carsrolling by at some point as they take the images used to craft the maps you use on a regular basis. Just type in an address, and you'll be transported there in an instant so you can have a 360-degree view of the point of interest and its surroundings. But as useful as this view can be, it's also an invitation for scammers to use your home to try and intimidate you. Especially if you happen to have your home visible in one of the photos.That means strangers could scope out where you live, but Google Maps lets them do it easily -- from their couch. Anyone with a phone or computer can do it. Including someone who wants to scam you out of money or time.Fortunately, there's a simple way to blur your home on Google Maps and help prevent others from seeing too many details of where you live. Here's how to do it.For more, check outessential Google Maps tips for traveling. Watch this: How to Blur Your Home or an Object in Google Maps 02:24 How to blur your home on Google MapsYou'll need to do this on your computer -- the blurring feature isn't available in the Google Maps application on iOS or Android. It is accessible through the web browser on your mobile device, but it's rather difficult to use, so your best choice is a trusted web browser on your Mac or PC instead.Atmaps.google.com, enter your home address in the search bar at the top-right, hit return, then click the photo of your home that appears. Click on the photo of your home, right above your address, on the top-left part of the page. Screenshot by Nelson Aguilar/CNETNext, you'll see the Street View of your location. ClickReport a Problem at the bottom-right. The text is super tiny, but it's there. This is the Street View of your location. Screenshot by Nelson Aguilar/CNETNow, it's up to you to choose what you want Google to blur. Using your mouse, adjust the view of the image so that your home and anything else you want to blur is all contained within the red and black box. Use your cursor to move around and the plus and minus buttons to zoom in and out, respectively. If you want to blur more than what's in the black/red box, use the + button to zoom in. Screenshot by Nelson Aguilar/CNETOnce you're finished adjusting the image, choose what you're requesting to blur underneath:A faceYour homeYour car/license plateA different objectYou'll be asked to give a bit more detail as to what exactly you want blurred, in case the image is busy with several cars, people and other objects.Also, be completely sure that what you select is exactly what you want blurred. Google cautions that once you blur something on Street View, it's blurred permanently.Finally, enter your email (this is required), verify the captcha (if needed), and click Submit. You're required to provide additional information about what you want to blur, so be thorough. Screenshot by Nelson Aguilar/CNETYou should then receive an email from Google that says it'll review your report and get back to you once the request is either denied or approved. You may receive more emails from Google asking for more information regarding your request. Google doesn't offer any information on how long your request will take to process, so just keep an eye out for any further emails.For more, take an inside look at how Google built Immersive View for Maps.

This is the year Apple shows us the next phase of Vision Pro, Apple Intelligence and HomePod speakers (with screens?) CNET's Bridget Carey highlights the biggest products we're expecting from Apple in 2025.

January 3, 20253 min readHeliophysics Is Set to Shine in 2025The science of the sun and its effects on the solar system is a sprawling discipline that expects a very exciting 2025By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee BillingsThe sun sends out a constant flow of charged particles called the solar wind, which ultimately travels past all the planets to some three times the distance to Pluto before being impeded by the interstellar medium. This forms a giant bubble around the sun and its planets, known as the heliosphere. NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image LabIf our solar system were to lose a few moons or even a planet, the difference might be hard to noticebut lose the sun, and everything changes. Despite its role as neighborhood linchpin, however, scientists still have a whole host of questions about how the sun works and how it influences our daily life on Earth and in space. And 2025 is poised to play a key role in getting answers.Three factors are combining to make the coming year particularly exciting for the discipline known as heliophysics: the suns natural activity cycle, a fleet of spacecraft launches and the release of a blueprint designed to guide the next decade of work in the field.Right now the sun is in the maximum phase of its 11-year activity cycle, where scientists expect it to remain for perhaps another year or so before its activity begins to wane. And although the current Solar Cycle 25 isnt breaking any records, it has produced a host of solar flares and other spectacular outbursts that scientists have been able to monitor with recent new instruments. Those observers include both the largest solar telescope ever built and a spacecraft that has made the closest approach to the sun in history.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.And this year those groundbreaking projects will get plenty of new company; NASA alone expects to launch half a dozen missions to study the sun and the myriad ways it shapes the solar system. Among them are the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, designed to help scientists map the outer limits of the suns sphere of influence; the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, a pair of spacecraft that will orbit Mars to study the Red Planets experience of space weather; and the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission, which combines four small satellites orbiting Earth to study the suns outer atmosphere, or corona.Moreover, U.S. heliophysicists have a new so-called decadal report, a blueprint for the coming decade that sketches out a host of national science priorities, that was released last month and that federal agencies will begin implementing in the coming year. Im really excited about it, says Joe Westlake, a heliophysicist and director of the Heliophysics Division of NASAs Science Mission Directorate.These decadals are aspirational views of our future, he says. Theres some really good stuff in this one.For future spacecraft missions, the report recommends that NASA pursue two large projects. One mission would consist of a total of 26 spacecraft: Two would be stationed high above our planets poles in circular orbits and would take images of auroras and Earths magnetic field from afar. The rest would be located in more elliptical orbits that pass through the geomagnetic field, where they would gather local observations of its strength and nearby plasma. Twenty-plus spacecraft and the ability to put those all together at the same time, looking down, looking up and collecting observations, is going to be such an incredible dataset tool for us, says Nicki Rayl, acting deputy director of the Heliophysics Division. I think its going to be groundbreaking.The second large project would be a spacecraft designed to swoop over both poles of the sun several times over the course of an entire 11-year solar activity cycle. A current NASA mission, the Parker Solar Probe, has been diving ever closer to the suns surface, but it has stuck to observing the sun over its equatorial region. Meanwhile an ongoing European Space Agency mission called Solar Orbiter has provided only partial views of the solar poles. Consequently, our stars poles remain mysterious regions, even as they play a key role in the evolution of the suns magnetic field. Going to the poles of the sun is hard, and its a tricky environment to get into, Rayl says. Thats the next unknown territory.On Earth, these ambitious missions would be augmented by the Next Generation Global Oscillations Network Group (ngGONG), which builds on the existing GONG group of observatories that began work in 1995. These observatories are spread around the world to keep the sun in their sights throughout the day, and they use a technique called helioseismology to study the solar interior by observing waves passing through it, much as geologists employ seismology to study the interior of Earth.Some of these audacious, incredible goals that are in the decadal help us really jump into the unknowns and do some discovery science, Rayl says. And in the meantime, she notes, the missions launching in the coming year will yield ever more insightsand new questions to askabout the sun. Im just thrilled that were going to be in the data-collection mode, she says. Its go time.

January 3, 20254 min readJumping 'Numts' from Mitochondria Can Be Fast and DeadlyBits of DNA from mitochondria can skip surprisingly fast into our genome and may reduce lifespanBy Martin Picard edited by Madhusree MukerjeeLittle loops floating inside this illustration of a mitochondrion represent its DNA. Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library/Getty ImagesMost of us remember two things from high school biology: that mitochondria are the powerhouses of cells and that we inherit stable sets of chromosomes from our two parents. Both truisms are only sort of true. Mitochondria do far more than produce energythey also compress and transmit information about the state of a cell. And our chromosomes, although safely ensconced within the cells nucleus, are far from stable. A piece of genetic code from another chromosome, or even from a virus, can embed itself into the DNA chain, changing how itand wefunction.Mitochondria descend from an ancient bacterium that was swallowed, millions of years ago, by an ancestral cell from which all life descends. As living beings, they have their own genes, called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Starting in the 1960s, researchers showedfirst in mice and then in yeasts and humansthat pieces of mtDNA can somehow also jump into chromosomes and named these insertions nuclear mitochondrial DNA segments, or numts (pronounced new mites). In 2022 Patrick Chinnery of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues cataloged numts from more than 60,000 humans and found that new ones are created once in about 4,000 births. All of us walk around with numts that weve inherited from ancestors in our chromosomes.In 2024, however, Weichen (Arthur) Zhou and Ryan Mills, both at the University of Michigan, and Kalpita Karan, then at my laboratory at Columbia University, in collaboration with me and others, made an astonishing discovery. Numtogenesis, or the formation of new numts, happens not only across millennia but likely several times over during a persons lifespan. In cultures of human cells, numtogenesis happens over days to weeks. Further, numts seem to be particularly concentrated in the brainand may influence how long we live.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.These groundbreaking studies began at Rush University Medical Center, where a team led by neuroscientist David Bennett sequenced DNA from more than 1,000 brain samples from individuals enrolled in a long-term study of aging. Scanning these data, Zhou, Mills, Karan and their colleagues found that chromosomes in the brain cellshad many numts. Intriguingly, the prefrontal cortex, the seat of high-level rational thinking, had a particularly high concentration of these intrusions. And people with more numts in their prefrontal cortex had died earlier. People with normal cognition had lost as many as five years of life per numt. (In people with dementia caused by Alzheimers disease, numts didnt seem to matter: their age at death was unrelated to how many numts they had in their prefrontal cortex.)All previous searches for numts had been performed using immune cells from blood samples; that is why the scientific community had missed this stunning fact for decades. Blood immune cells undergo constant quality control, so only the best cells survive to be sequenced. Presumably, immune cells with numts are eliminatedor maybe numts just dont happen in immune cells. In the brain, bad neurons cannot be so readily discarded, which may be why neurons with genome alterations from numts persisted long enough to meet the DNA sequencer.You might wonder how these mtDNA fragments get inside the nucleus in the first place. Mitochondria, we now know, have many ways to release their DNA into the cytoplasm surrounding their host cell. Once there, mtDNA fragments can make their way into the nucleus either through pores in its wall or, if the cell divides, seep in while the envelope dissolves and reassembles. Either way, the release of mtDNA appears to be a process controlled by mitochondria.The fact that numts can adversely affect health is perhaps not so surprising. Retrotransposons, gene fragments that jump from one chromosome to another, trigger inflammation and possibly contribute to aging. In 2017 Keshav K. Singh and others at University of Alabama at Birmingham, showed that numtogenesis speeds up in cancerous cells and may contribute to cancer formation.But how fast can new numts arise in normal cells? To address this question in our groups 2024 study, Karan used the Cellular Lifespan Study database developed by Gabriel Sturm, in which cells from different individuals are cultured in vitro and observed over time as they age. She found that cultured human cells accumulate one new numt every 13 days on averagea remarkable rate. Taking cells out of the body accelerates multiple hallmarks of aging, which may explain why numtogenesis happens so fast in cell cultures.We also discovered that stress accelerates numtogenesis. Work that Sturm, Natalia Bobba-Alves, then at Columbia, I and our colleagues published in 2023 shows that energetic stress, caused by energy deficiency within a cell, can compromise the health of mitochondria. Karan found that when the mitochondria were dysfunctional, as occurs in people with mitochondrial diseases (and, to lesser extent, in those with diabetes and other metabolic disorders), cells in cultures accumulated numts up to 4.7 times more rapidly. Cells with defective mitochondria showed a new numt about once in every three days.These findings suggest a new way in which stress can affect the biology of our cells: making mitochondria more likely to release pieces of mtDNA that then infect chromosomes. And they add one more way in which mitochondria shape our health beyond energy transformation: directly changing the sequence of our genome. Numtogenesis may serve to speed up evolution as a response to stress.Most importantly, given that people with more numts in their brain die earlier, we must also add numtogenesis to the list of mechanisms that may contribute to how long we live. Mitochondria give us energy and life, for sure, but they may also contribute to the dimming of our inner flame of life.

January 2, 20255 min readWhat Is the ZodiacAnd What Does It Mean for You?The familiar zodiac constellations are defined by Earths motion around the sun, but they dont define your fateBy Phil Plait edited by Lee BillingsThis 17th-century celestial map by the Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit shows star groups as well as astrological signs and zodiacal constellations. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesIm a Libra.What does that mean? If youre an evidence-based thinker, it means nothing. If youre a believer in astrology, however, it means I was born at a time of the year when the suns influence on me (unidentifiable and uncertain and unexplainable as it is) was ruled by the Libra sun sign, although that signs relation to the actual constellation of Libra is fuzzy at best. If you do believe in astrology, you and I should have some words.But what does it even mean to say the sun is in Libra? Why place importance on that constellation and not, say, Orion, which, in nearly all ways, is objectively cooler?On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.It boils down to two things: our solar system is flat, and motion is relative.Lets tackle the relative motion part first. Consider our own familiar Earth, for example. Our planet revolves around the sun once per year. From our point of view, stuck on Earth, it looks like the sun goes around us once a year. Physically, thats not the case, but perceptually, it iswhich, heliocentrism aside, is why we still geocentrically say the sun sets rather than something like Earth turns such that the horizon rises to block the sun. Fair enoughwe dont viscerally feel Earth spinning once per day or revolving around the sun at 100,000 kilometers per hour.Other stars are much, much farther away than the sun, so they appear fixed in the sky relative to one another. Our meaning-seeking brain naturally interprets patterns in these fixed stars as recognizable figures that we call constellations (literally, collections of stars). Well, theyre mostly recognizable: while Orion does look like a human and Scorpius does resemble a scorpion, Libra is comprised of just four main stars in a wonky rhombus.As Earth spins, we see these stars rise and set every day. If Earth were fixed in space relative to the sun, wed see the same constellations in the sky every night all year. Instead, because Earth moves around our star, from our perspective, the sun is constantly moving through a backdrop of constellations, taking a full year to travel all the way around the sky and return back to the place it started.Heres where the flatness of our solar system comes in. Earth, like all the other major planets, orbits the sun in a flat, nearly circular ellipse, so the suns apparent motion against the fixed stars traces a line around the skyan ellipse with Earth at the center. We call this path the ecliptic.That motion doesnt change appreciably year after year, century after century; the sun follows the same well-worn path through the same constellations. The names are familiar: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius (not Scorpio, please), Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius and Pisces. Many of these constellations represent animals, and the ancient Greeks called these constellations, collectively, the zodiakos kyklos, or circle of animals. From that, we now call it the zodiac.The suns motion through the zodiacal (pronounced zo-dye-a-kul) constellations produces a calendar of sorts; our star is superposed on Pisces in late March, for example. This is complicated in the long run by a wobble in Earths rotation called precession, which is caused by the gravitational tugging of the moon and sun. Over millennia, the timing of the suns position in a given zodiacal constellation gets thrown off, creating a disconnect between what astrologers call the sun signs and the actual constellations. Three thousand years ago, when the signs were first used by the ancient Greeks, the sun was indeed in Libra in late September. But because of precession, that has since changed, so our star was actually in the constellation of Virgo when I was born.Its important to understand that the constellations we recognize are not natural but a product of random star placement filtered through the human brains proclivity for pattern recognition. Sometimes different cultures see different patterns, and it just so happens that many modern societies mostly use the same ones as the ancient Greeks. But even then, the origins are a little fuzzy. For example, the Greeks considered Libra to be a part of Scorpiusits claws, specificallywhile the Babylonians thought Libra to be a scorpion-free balance, or set of scales.This means the ancient Greeks thought there were only 11 zodiacal constellations, not 12, with Libra being introduced only much later to round them out to an even dozen.But it gets worse. The actual path of the sun, the ecliptic, passes through more than just those 12 constellations. Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer) is between Sagittarius and Scorpius, and the sun actually spends about 20 daysmost of a monthinside its borders. Thats longer than the sun spends in Scorpius! So Ophiuchus arguably deserves to be in the zodiac more than some venomous arthropod, but it happens to contain fainter stars in a vaguer pattern, so it is left out.And were still not done, because while the solar system is flat, its not perfectly so. In other words, the other planets orbit the sun largely in the same plane as Earth but not exactly. Jupiters orbit around the sun is tipped relative to Earths by a little more than a degree. Venuss is tilted by more than three degrees. The moons orbit is inclined by more than five degrees! That means the moon and planets can appear well north or south of the ecliptic, and they can occasionally be inside the borders of other constellations outside the canonical 12 zodiacal ones. There are fully a dozen more constellations that the moon and planets can move through, including Canis Minor, Pegasus and even our old friend Orion.So no matter how you slice it, the zodiacfrom the member constellations to even the meaning that our pattern-projecting brain assigns to those particular groupings of starsis made up.This doesnt mean the zodiac is not a useful construct. It is! Just like the other constellations, the zodiac provides a framework we can use to navigate our way in the sky. For an astronomer with some familiarity of the heavens, knowing that Jupiter is in Taurus (it is as I write this, for example) means the giant planet is visible in the fall and winter after sunset because thats when the bull-shaped constellation is most easily observed in the Northern Hemisphere. If you want more detail, there are any number of coordinate systems we can use to zero in on a particular position, but if you just want to go out and be under the night sky, the zodiacal constellations offer a good enough set of celestial directions. Plus, many of them contain bright stars in obvious patterns that are easy to spot and identify, so observing them is fun.And thats no Taurus.

New Year's gaming resolutions we're definitely going to stick toWhat are yours?Image credit: Adobe Stock / Marina Zlochin Feature by Robert Purchese Associate Editor Additional contributions byChris Tapsell, Jessica Orr, Katharine Castle, Lottie Lynn, Marie Pritchard, Tom Phillips, and Victoria KennedyPublished on Jan. 3, 2025 Like the frost on the cars and ground this morning - and the inside of my single-glazed windows in my flat! - a new year has arrived. It's a time to take stock and look ahead and think what might be, and then run back into bed and hide under the duvet covers and refuse to come out. It's a time to plan and to begin aspirational journals you'll put down and forget about and never find again. A time to tackle the gaming backlog you keep talking about, fully in the knowledge you'll probably double it this year. It's fresh-slate time, promise time, all done in the hope you'll look back next year and discover you did something you intended to do. So, what do you want to do, from a gaming perspective?Here, we look back at our gaming resolutions from last year to see how we did, and then we set some anew. Are you brave enough to commit yours to writing?JessicaI wanted to pay more attention to indie games last year, and while I certainly played more of them than I did in 2023, I apparently had a secret ambition to start more massive RPGs than ever before. It was hard to squeeze in time for those indie horrors and puzzlers when games like Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, Metaphor: Refantazio, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard were all stealing 100-hour playtimes from me.13 horror games we're looking forward to being scared by this year.Watch on YouTubeThis year, I want to dial back the inventory management and take a bit of a breather, immersing myself in more peaceful landscapes. Spending so much time exploring Infinity Nikki's cutesy, fairytale-esque world has made me realise that whether it's a four-hour indie, or another 100-hour monstrosity, the time I spend feeling relaxed in one game is far more valuable than trying to work my way through a list - even if I am still looking forward to playing those games eventually.Is this my way of giving myself a pass to just play Infinity Nikki this year? Maybe. But as long as it keeps its silly, mellow vibes that keep me feeling happy, I don't really mind if I'm missing out on the latest Game of the Year contender.TomMy new year's resolution is to become less of a completionist. I think it's becoming a problem. When I play games, I like to finish everything I can before moving on to the next area. I'm playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle right now, for example, and I'm really keen to get out of the Vatican and back to the jungles and deserts that await. But I can't. Something inside me is making me hunt down photos of cats, and finish side quests and eat all of the biscotti I can get before I go. And that's great - it's a sign I'm enjoying a game that I want to be completionist - but the longer I linger, the more frustrating it can get that I'm not somewhere else already.As I look to February and a likely 100 hours sneaking around feudal Japan in Assassin's Creed Shadows - a game that will probably be stuffed to the brim with distractions and collectibles, and whatever the feudal Japanese equivalent of biscotti is - it's a resolution worth making, I think. Ignore your bulging quest log, stop scouring for that last little thing. It's time to move on and get to more of the good stuff.MarieMy resolution for last year was to complete the main story of at least three games I've not completed yet. Did I reach that goal? Technically no I didn't, but I'll give myself credit for coming close with two stories completed.This year I'll be less strict, and less ambitious, with my resolution. I'd like to find myself returning to games that have previously brought me joy, specifically time-management or life simulators like The Sims 4. I spend most of my time on consoles with bigger games, mainly live services and RPGs, so it'd be nice to get back to the kind of PC gaming I used to love in games like The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon. There's something I find infinitely relaxing about managing the smaller details in those games (my parks are usually free with very expensive merchandise...).Does this count as a resolution if it's so vague? I'd like to think so.ChrisThis year I'd like to play more games with other people. Specifically with my friends (my partner couldn't give two hoots about gaming and frankly I love that - it's nice to have our own hobbies!). But as my old group of friends has got older and busier and more spread out, gaming has been the best way to keep in touch with them. I fell out of the habit a bit in 2024 with all the usual, cloying tendrils of modern life getting in the way. This year, I'm going to reserve a little window of time, even if it's every other week, to check in with mates and play something together. That something will probably be one of the games we've been playing together, over and over, since we were spotty little teenagers, rather than anything new or exciting. But that's kind of the point.VictoriaLast year I resolved to play The Sims more honestly, with no cheats greasing my hypothetical wheels to the top. Did I manage it? Well, not exactly. I tried. Hand on heart I really did. But the allure of spamming that money code is just too dang strong. I like being rich in The Sims, with all the hot tubs and space rockets that come with it. I don't like waiting for my characters to come home from work, for them to then watch shows on a crap TV which is always at risk of breaking. So while things started off well enough, I soon gave into temptation and deployed the motherlode code. I have no regrets.Nine open world games we're excited about that are coming in 2025.Watch on YouTubeAs for this year, I am actually still a tad undecided. Since starting at Eurogamer, I have broadened my video game horizons tenfold, and in the last couple of years I have played more indies and other games than I ever would have. Last year, my personal Game of the Year was actually I Am Your Beast, and there is no way I would have given it even a glance a few years ago. But I absolutely loved it.So I guess I'll do a similar thing again: resolve to keep trying games that may not initially sound like my cup of tea. Perhaps like last year, I will be pleasantly surprised by the results.KatharineI made a resolution last year to finally play GTA 5. Did I play GTA 5 last year? Did I heck. There's probably not much point in trying to do so now ahead of GTA 6 coming out if I'm being honest, but the GTA series as a whole has always been a bit of a blindspot for me, as have Rockstar games more generally. I just never quite have the time to dedicate myself to them properly, you know!? Maybe I'll resolve to finally play Red Dead Redemption 2 instead this year - the setting and tone of it is much more appealing to me as a concept than GTA, and I've always admired the horses in it as well. Honestly, nobody does horses quite like RDR2 does.BertieI did it; I can't believe I actually stuck to a resolution. Last year I said I'd start streaming and I did. I joined a Dungeons & Dragons group called Chaotic Questers and began streaming roughly once a week on Twitch. We even went to a castle on the Scottish border for a weekend, to record there, which was fun, especially when our car broke down for good on the way back. It's been quite an adventure getting to know and understand the world of streaming from the inside, and it has increased my respect tenfold for the people who do it. Standing beside the M6 near a gang of cows - they were threatening, actually - while waiting for the RAC to appear was quite an experience too.Oh, and while I didn't manage to start my own personal video game stream, my partner did, so that's probably worth half a point? I also didn't manage to run a tabletop RPG, though D&D formed a central part of my gaming year. I'm still reading TTRPG books, though, and tinkering away on my own campaign, so I came close. Another half-point?To see this content please enable targeting cookies. This year, I'm being more specific. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it but I've never properly played through a From Software game. I've dabbled in them - in Demon's Souls (the original!) and Dark Souls and Bloodborne and Elden Ring - but I've never persevered for fear of being too aggravated by a game late at night. But I realise - Path of Exile 2 helped me realise - that I actually relish a combat challenge, so this year I'm seeking to change things. I promise to beat five bosses in Elden Ring, and you can hold me to that. And I'm phrasing it that way so I don't baulk at the prospect of beating the entire game, though that is my eventual goal, of course. I'm determined to do this - so determined I'm going to start tonight before my determination wanders, which it has an annoying habit of doing.That's it. Nice and simple. Beyond that, I'm going to challenge myself to play games in genres I don't normally, but that's a much more vague thing to pin down.LottieI've been playing RuneScape for more than half my life, which makes it my most successful relationship outside of my family. Considering this, you'd expect I'd have long maxed out my character's levels. Well this isn't the case. See, I've been sitting at Level 88 Herblore for the last seven years. In fact I don't think I've gained more than 10,000 XP in the skill during this time.The issue is I just detest training Herblore. Outside of mini-games, the process is so tedious. Get herb, clean herb (yes, you have to clean it first), get second ingredient, buy vials, fill vials with water, put ingredients in, most likely empty vials so you can do the process over and over again. It just takes forever.Yet, that Level 88 has been burning a hole in my eyes over the past year so, in the grand year of 2025, I shall attempt to reach Level 89 Herblore despite the pain. (And no. I won't use XP lamps. Don't bring such nonsense into my house.)

Helldivers reveals Star Fox-style game concept, as it invites ideas for next projectSmash in the pan.Image credit: Arrowhead News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Jan. 3, 2025 Helldivers studio Arrowhead has shared a number of former pitches, including a Star Fox-style game based within the Helldivers universe.In a New Year's post on X, Arrowhead CCO and Helldivers 2 creative director, Johan Pilestedt, asked players to share their "expectations and desires for what the next Arrowhead game will be", hinting that he was "working on the high concept" to the studio's next release.Helldivers 2 - Omens of Tyranny | PS5 & PC Games.Watch on YouTubeResponding to comments from the community, Pilestedt then opened up about a number of "high concept" pitches previously considered, including the Star Fox-esque game tentatively called "Eagles of Democracy"."We made a prototype in unreal," Pilestedt added. "It would basically try to capture Starfox. So arcade... but still simulated."The title was 'Eagles of Democracy'."To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Pilestedt also shared that the team had previously worked on a concept for a top-down reimagining of the 1990 arcade game, Smash TV, too:To see this content please enable targeting cookies."Smash TV is a top-down reimagining of the classic arcade game of 1990," the pitch began which was reportedly written around 12 years ago. "The game pits up to four contestants in a violent game show set in the distant future of 1999. The game focuses on the source inspiration for Smash TV to create a game filled with brutal action, death traps, and gladiator-inspired game shows."The game plays homage to 80s action movies such as The Running Man, Total Recall, RoboCop, and Escape from New York, tying everything together with cheesy music, 'cool' visual effects and over-the-top storytelling."Arrowhead recently responded to criticism from players of the high cost of its Killzone 2 crossover, eventually deciding to gift all players the planned second set of the collaboration items for free.