An anonymous reader shares a report: The global gaming phenomenon Minecraft is coming to the real world for the first time in a global deal to open themed rides, attractions, hotel rooms and retail outlets, starting with the UK and US. Minecraft has struck a deal with UK-headquartered Merlin Entertainments -- Europe's largest theme park operator and the second biggest globally after Disney -- which runs more than 135 attractions in 23 countries including Alton Towers, Legoland, Sea Life, Madame Tussauds and the London Eye.

Under the terms of the deal, Merlin will invest more than $110 million in the first two attractions. They are due to open in the UK and the US in 2026 and 2027, in either an existing theme park or as new city centre attractions. Over the longer term the two companies plan to expand the strategic partnership, which is called "Adventures Made Real," to other countries and territories. Minecraft is the bestselling video game of all time, with 140 million players each month, in territories as disparate as Antarctica and Vatican City, and there are more than 1.3 trillion videos posted by game players on YouTube.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this year I had one of those encounters which, afterwards, I just couldn't stop thinking about. Eight months and some digging later, I have decided to write about it. My meeting was with an American businessman called Tom Kearney, who was on a pavement in central London one Christmas when he was whacked on the head so hard that he fell to the ground, spent weeks in a coma, and only just survived. Had he been mugged? Not quite. He'd been hit by the giant wing mirror of a London bus.

[...] The most recent data show that 86 people died or were badly injured in bus collisions in London between 10 December 2023 and 31 March 2024. Kearney's analysis of TfL data suggests that around three people a day are hospitalised after bus safety incidents. That doesn't feel good, even though it's tiny in comparison to the 1.8bn annual passenger journeys. Compared with other world cities like New York and Paris the capital's buses rank in the top quartile for financial efficiency but the bottom quartile for collisions per kilometre. And the number of collisions in London has increased in the past couple of years, despite buses travelling fewer miles.

Could this have anything to do with the way that bus contracts prioritise speed? Last week, hundreds of bus drivers marched to TfL headquarters to demand better working conditions and the right to report safety concerns "without fear of retribution from TfL or employers." Drivers described the pressure of long shifts, few breaks and having to drive in sometimes blistering heat, all while being shouted at over a monitor by controllers who want them to make up the time to the next stop, and keep the right amount of distance between their bus and next. It's not surprising that a third of bus drivers, before the pandemic, reported having had a "close call" from fatigue.

With the government about to export the London franchise model to other parts of the country, someone in Whitehall needs to take a look. Michael Liebreich, a former McKinsey consultant who sat on the TfL board for six years, believes that TfL's contracting out model is "institutionally unsafe." Bus drivers are under such pressure, he thinks, that some may break the speed limit and overtake cyclists dangerously.

Slashdot unixbhaskar writes: Linus has released a fresh Linux kernel for public consumption. Please give it a try and report any glitches to the maintainers for improvement. Also, please do not forget to express your appreciation to those tireless folks who did all the hard work for you.
The blog OMG Ubuntu calls it "one of the most biggest kernel releases for a while," joking that it's a "really real-time kernel." The headline feature in Linux 6.12 is mainline support for PREEMPT_RT. This patch set dramatically improves the performance of real-time applications by making kernel processes pre-emptible — effectively enabled proper real-time computing... Meanwhile, Linus Torvalds himself contributes a new method for user-space address masking designed to claw back some of the performance lost due to Spectre-v1 mitigations.

You might have heard that kernel devs have been working to add QR error codes to Linux's kernel panic BSOD screen (as a waterfall of error text is often cut off and not easily copied for ad-hoc debugging). Well, Linux 6.12 adds support for those during Direct Rendering Manager panics...

A slew of new RISC-V CPU ISA extensions are supported in Linux 6.12; hybrid CPU scaling in the Intel P-State driver lands ahead of upcoming Intel Core Ultra 2000 chips; and AMD P-State driver improves AMD Boost and AMD Preferred Core features.
More coverage from the blog 9to5Linux highlights a new scheduler called sched_ext, Clang support (including LTO) for nolibc, support for NVIDIA's virtual command queue implementation for SMMUv3, and "an updated cpuidle tool that now displays the residency value of cpuidle states for a clearer and more detailed view of idle state information when using cpuidle-info." Linux kernel 6.12 also introduces SWIG bindings for libcpupower to make it easier for developers to write scripts that use and extend the functionality of libcpupower, support for translating normalized error addresses reported by an AMD memory controller into system physical addresses using a UEFI mechanism called platform runtime mechanism (PRM), as well as simplified loading of microcode patches on AMD Zen and newer CPUs by using the family, model, and stepping encoded in the patch revision number...

Moreover, Linux 6.12 adds support for running as a protected guest on Android as well as perf and support for a bunch of new interconnect PMUs. It also adds the final conversions to the new Intel VFM CPU model matching macros, rewrites the PCM buffer allocation handling and locking optimizations, and improves the USB audio driver...

Chances of intelligent life emerging in our Universe "and in any hypothetical ones beyond it" can be estimated by a new theoretical model, reports the Royal Astronomical Society.

Since stars are a precondition for the emergence of life, the new research predicts that a typical observer [i.e., intelligent life] should experience a substantially larger density of dark energy than is seen in our own Universe... The approach presented in the paper involves calculating the fraction of ordinary matter converted into stars over the entire history of the Universe, for different dark energy densities. The model predicts this fraction would be approximately 27% in a universe that is most efficient at forming stars, compared to 23% in our own Universe. Dark energy makes the Universe expand faster, balancing gravity's pull and creating a universe where both expansion and structure formation are possible. However, for life to develop, there would need to be regions where matter can clump together to form stars and planets, and it would need to remain stable for billions of years to allow life to evolve.

Crucially, the research suggests that the astrophysics of star formation and the evolution of the large-scale structure of the Universe combine in a subtle way to determine the optimal value of the dark energy density needed for the generation of intelligent life. Professor Lucas Lombriser, Université de Genève and co-author of the study, added: "It will be exciting to employ the model to explore the emergence of life across different universes and see whether some fundamental questions we ask ourselves about our own Universe must be reinterpreted."
The study was funded by the EU's European Research Council, and published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Economist: Britain has long been a pioneer in telecoms. In 1837 it built the world's first commercial telegraph; the first transatlantic call was placed from London in 1927; in 1992 a British programmer sent the first text message to a mobile phone. Today it lags rather than leads. According to figures provided to The Economist by Opensignal, a research firm, Britain ranks 46th for download speeds out of the 56 developed and developing countries for which there are data. That gives it the worst mobile service in the rich world.

Some of this is due to demand. Over the past three years data usage on mobile devices has doubled as people stream films and play games. The busiest parts of cities often lack mobile reception because the system is at capacity. But mainly it is an issue of supply. British users of 5G are only on it 11% of the time. That puts Britain 43rd out of the 56 countries. This lacklustre performance is caused by a combination of government U-turns, insufficient investment and sclerotic planning.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The Australian government plans to enact laws requiring big tech firms to protect its citizens online, the latest move by the center-left Labor administration to crack down on social media including through age limits and curbs on misinformation. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland announced the government's plan for a legislated Digital Duty of Care in Australia on Wednesday night, saying it aligned with similar laws in the UK and European Union. "It is now time for industry to show leadership, and for social media to recognize it has a social responsibility," Rowland said in a speech in Sydney announcing the measures. It would "keep users safe and help prevent online harms."

In response to the laws, Facebook and Instagram operator Meta Platforms Inc. called for the restrictions to be handled by app stores, such as those run by Google and Apple Inc., rather than the platforms themselves. The government has ignored those requests, but has yet to announce what fines companies would face or what age verification information will need to be provided. At the same time, Albanese has moved forward controversial laws to target misinformation and disinformation online, which opponents have labeled an attack on freedom of speech. Earlier this month, Albanese said the government would legislate for a ban on social media for children under 16, a policy the government says is world-leading. "Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told a news conference.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking 3 billion pounds in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at "rip-off" prices. "iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple's operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened," Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).

The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up to iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers -- including by not allowing them to store or back-up all of their phone's data with a third-party provider. "iOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit," Which noted. The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. "Apple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023," it wrote, saying it's seeking damages for all affected Apple customers -- and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of 70 pounds (around $90), depending on how long they've been paying Apple for iCloud services. "Anyone who has 'obtained' iCloud services, including non-paying users, over the nine-year timeframe since the Consumer Rights Act came into force on October 1st, 2015," will be included in the claim. U.K.-based consumers will have to opt-out if they do not want to be included. "Consumers who live outside the U.K. and believe they are eligible to be included must actively opt-in to join the action," adds TechCrunch.

A new study reveals that late work is judged more negatively than on-time submissions, even if delays are minimal or pre-communicated. "The findings suggest that, while you might be tempted to take the maximum allotted time to put the finishing touches to a report, submission or piece of work, the extra effort might not be appreciated by colleagues if it comes at the expense of punctual delivery," reports The Guardian. From the report: The study surveyed thousands of people in the US and UK, including managers, executives, human resources personnel and others whose jobs included an element of evaluating others. Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as advertising flyers, art, business proposals, product pitches, photography and news articles. But first, they were told it was either submitted early, on deadline or late. "Late" work was consistently rated as worse in quality than when people were told the same work was completed early or on time. The difference was equivalent to including an objective shortcoming such as not meeting a word count.

A missed deadline led evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and they reported they would be less willing to work with or assign tasks to that person in the future. "Everyone saw the exact same art contest entry, school submission or business proposal, but they couldn't help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was," said Maglio, who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University.

Those who eagerly submit work early should be advised that this does not appear to earn a boost in opinion, according to the report in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. It also didn't matter how late the work was submitted, with one day or one week delays viewed just as negatively -- and that remained the case if the employee gave their manager advance warning. The latest study suggests that it is this inability to plan realistically that is frowned on, with factors beyond an employee's control, such as jury duty, not viewed as negatively. "If the reason why you missed the deadline was beyond your control, you as the employee should let your manager know," said Maglio. "That seems to be one of the few instances in which people cut you a break."

AmiMoJo writes: The climate-damaging vapors left behind by jet planes could be easily tackled, aviation experts say, with a new study suggesting they could be eliminated for a few pounds per flight. Jet condensation trails, or contrails, have spawned wild conspiracy theories alleging mind control and the spreading of disease, but scientists say the real problem is their warming effect.

"They create an artificial layer of clouds, which traps the heat from the Earth that's trying to escape to outer space," said Carlos Lopez de la Osa, from the Transport & Environment campaign group, which has carried out a new study on the solutions to contrails. "The scale of the warming that's associated with them is roughly having a similar impact to that of aviation carbon emissions."

Tweaking the flight paths of a handful of aircraft could reduce contrail warming by more than half by 2040, at a cost of less than $5.1 per flight. Geography and a flight's latitude have a strong influence on whether a contrail is warming. Time of day also influences the climate effects of contrails. Those formed by evening and night flights have the largest warming contribution. Seasonality is also important -- the most warming contrails tend to occur in winter. "Planes are already flying around thunderstorms and turbulence areas," Mr Lopez de la Osa said. "We will need to add one more constraint to flight planning, which is avoiding areas of contrail formation."

Apple was notified by the European Union that its geo-blocking practices are potentially in breach of consumer protection rules, adding to the iPhone maker's regulatory issues in the bloc. From a report: Apple's App Store, iTunes Store and other media services unlawfully discriminate against European customers based on their place of residence, according to a European Commission statement on Tuesday.

The notification comes as Apple is facing the first-ever fine under the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, for failing to allow app developers to steer users to cheaper deals, Bloomberg News reported last week. That penalty is set to come months after the Cupertino, California-based company was hit with a $1.9 billion fine for similar abuses under the bloc's traditional competition rules.

The geo-locating investigation was conducted together with a network of national consumer authorities and found Apple media services only allow users to use payment cards issued in the countries they registered their Apple accounts, according to the statement. The App Store also blocks users from downloading apps offered in other countries, the investigation found.

Major retailers are considering embedding radio-emitting threads into clothing as a novel anti-theft measure amid soaring retail crime rates, according to Bloomberg, citing industry sources. The technology, developed by Spanish firm Myruns, uses conductive ink derived from cellulose to create threads five times thinner than human hair that can trigger security alarms.

Zara owner Inditex has discussed implementing the system, though the company says it has no plans for in-store testing. Retail theft caused an estimated $73 billion in lost sales in the U.S. in 2022, according to the National Retail Federation, while UK losses doubled to $4.2 billion in 2023. The crisis has prompted retailers to increase security personnel and surveillance systems. The threadlike technology could provide an alternative to traditional metal-based security tags, potentially offering biodegradable and recyclable anti-theft protection.

The UK's oldest satellite, Skynet-1A, mysteriously shifted from its original orbit above East Africa to a new position over the Americas, likely due to a mid-1970s command whose origins remain unknown. "The question is who that was and with what authority and purpose?" asks the BBC. From the report: "It's still relevant because whoever did move Skynet-1A did us few favours," says space consultant Dr Stuart Eves. "It's now in what we call a 'gravity well' at 105 degrees West longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis. "Because it's dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it's 'our' satellite we're still responsible for it," he explains.

Dr Eves has looked through old satellite catalogues, the National Archives and spoken to satellite experts worldwide, but he can find no clues to the end-of-life behaviour of Britain's oldest spacecraft. It might be tempting to reach for a conspiracy theory or two, not least because it's hard to hear the name "Skynet" without thinking of the malevolent, self-aware artificial intelligence (AI) system in The Terminator movie franchise. But there's no connection other than the name and, in any case, real life is always more prosaic.

A 2002 Slashdot post informed the world that "Recently Blake Ross, a developer of the Phoenix web browser, has made a post on the Mozillazine forums looking for a new name for the project. Apparently the people over at Phoenix Technologies decided that the name interferes with their trademark since they make an 'internet access device'..."

And then, on November 9 of 2004, the BBC reported that "Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a serious rival in the long-awaited Firefox 1.0 web browser, which has just been released." Their headline? "Firefox Browser Takes on Microsoft." Fans of the software have banded together to raise cash to pay for an advert in the New York Times announcing that version 1.0 of the browser is available. ["Are you fed up with your browser? You're not alone...."] The release of Firefox 1.0 on 9 November might even cause a few heads to turn at Microsoft because the program is steadily winning people away from the software giant's Internet Explorer browser.

Firefox has been created by the Mozilla Foundation which was started by former browser maker Netscape back in 1998... Earlier incarnations, but which had the same core technology, were called Phoenix and Firebird. Since then the software has been gaining praise and converts, not least because of the large number of security problems that have come to light in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Rivals to IE got a boost in late June when two US computer security organisations warned people to avoid the Microsoft program to avoid falling victim to a serious vulnerability.

Internet monitoring firm WebSideStory has charted the growing population of people using the Firefox browser and says it is responsible for slowly eroding the stranglehold of IE. Before July this year, according to WebSideStory, Internet Explorer was used by about 95% of web surfers. That figure had remained static for years. In July the IE using population dropped to 94.7% and by the end of October stood at 92.9%. The Mozilla Foundation claims that Firefox has been downloaded almost eight million times and has publicly said it would be happy to garner 10% of the Windows- using, net-browsing population.

Firefox is proving popular because, at the moment, it has far fewer security holes than Internet Explorer and has some innovations lacking in Microsoft's program. For instance, Firefox allows the pages of different websites to be arranged as tabs so users can switch easily between them. It blocks pop-ups, has a neat way of finding text on a page and lets you search through the pages you have browsed...
Firefox celebrated its 20th anniversary with a special video touting new and upcoming features like tab previews, marking up PDFs, and tab grouping.

And upgrading to the latest version of Firefox now displays this message on a "What's New" page. "Whether you just downloaded Firefox or have been with us since the beginning, you are a vital part of helping us make the internet a better place.

"We can't wait to show you what's coming next." ("Check out our special edition wallpapers — open a new tab and click the gear icon at the top right corner...")

An anonymous reader shares a post from Financial Times: The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world. From America's Democrats to Britain's Tories, Emmanuel's Macron's Ensemble coalition to Japan's Liberal Democrats, even to Narendra Modi's erstwhile dominant BJP, governing parties and leaders have undergone an unprecedented series of reversals this year.

The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that have been tracked by the ParlGov global research project and held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records. Ultimately voters don't distinguish between unpleasant things that their leaders and governments have direct control over, and those that are international phenomena resulting from supply-side disruptions caused by a global pandemic or the warmongering of an ageing autocrat halfway across the world.

Voters don't like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when inflation hit. The cost of living was also the top issue in Britain's July general election and has been front of mind in dozens of other countries for most of the last two years. That different politicians, different parties, different policies and different rhetoric deployed in different countries have all met similar fortunes suggests that a large part of Tuesday's American result was locked in regardless of the messenger or the message. The wide variety of places and people who swung towards Trump also suggests an outcome that was more inevitable than contingent.

But it's not just about inflation. An update of economist Arthur Okun's "misery index" -- the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates -- for this era might swap out joblessness and replace it with immigration. On this basis, the past couple of years in the US, UK and dozens of other countries have been characterised by more economic and societal upheaval than they have seen in generations.

Scalpers attempting to profit from Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro are struggling to sell units above retail price, as widespread availability dampens resale prospects. The $699 console, launched this week with enhanced graphics capabilities, remains in stock at major retailers across the United States and Europe. eBay listings show PS5 Pro units selling below the manufacturer's suggested retail price, with some auctions starting at $640.

While isolated listings reach $2,300, most hover near retail value. UK scalpers face similar challenges, offering units at or below the $900 retail price. Even in Sony's home market of Japan, where availability is tighter, resellers on Mercari barely break even after platform fees and shipping costs. The situation marks a sharp contrast to the original PS5's 2020 launch, when widespread shortages led to significant markups. Only the console's external disc drive, priced at $79.99, commands premiums up to $130 on secondary markets.

UK government-appointed commissioners have labeled Birmingham City Council's Oracle Fusion rollout as "the poorest ERP deployment" they have seen. From a report: A report published by the UK council's Corporate Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee found that 18 months after Fusion went live, the largest public authority in Europe "had not tactically stabilized the system or formulated clear plans to resolve the system issues and recover the operation."

The city council's cloud-based Oracle tech replaced the SAP system that it began using in 1999, but the disastrous project encountered a string of landmark failures. The council has failed to produce auditable accounts since Oracle was implemented in 2022, costs have ballooned from around 19 million pound to a projected estimate of 131 million pound and, because the council chose not to use system audit features, it cannot tell if fraud has taken place on its multibillion-pound spending budget for an 18-month period. In September last year, the council became effectively bankrupt due to outstanding equal pay claims and the Oracle implementation.

The report from "best value commissioners" appointed by central government to investigate struggling councils said that following the Oracle implementation, "a serious lack of trust had developed between members and officers driven by the failed implementation and subsequent lack of progress to resolve the situation."

IBM is facing a new lawsuit alleging that its Weather Channel website shared users' personal data with third-party ad partners without consent, violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Register reports: In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, the complaint [PDF] claims Big Blue violated America's Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), enacted in 1988 in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's videotape rental records. IBM was sued in 2019 (PDF) by then Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer over similar allegations: That its Weather Channel mobile app collected and shared location data without disclosure. The IT titan settled that claim in 2020. A separate civil action against IBM's Weather Channel was filed in 2020 and settled in 2023 (PDF).

This latest legal salvo against alleged Weather Channel-enabled data collection takes issue with the sensitive information made available through the company's website to third-party ad partners mParticle and AppNexus/Xandr (acquired by Microsoft in 2022). The former provides customer analytics, and the latter is an advertising and marketing platform. The complaint, filed on behalf of California plaintiff Ed Penning, contends that by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge.

It explains that the plaintiff's counsel retained a private research firm last year to analyze browser network traffic during video sessions on the Weather Channel website. The research firm is said to have confirmed that the website provided the third-party ad firms with information that could be used to identify people and the videos that they watched. The VPPA prohibits video providers from sharing "personally identifiable information" about clients without their consent. [...] The lawsuit aspires to be certified as a class action. Under the VPPA, a successful claim allows for actual damages (if any) and statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the law, as well as attorney's fees.

Microsoft is introducing a feature to Notepad called Rewrite that will let you use AI to "rephrase sentences, adjust tone, and modify the length of your content." The Verge reports: If you're a Windows Insider with early access to the feature, you can try it by highlighting the text you want to adjust in Notepad, right-clicking it, and choosing Rewrite. Notepad will then display a dialogue box where you can decide how they want to change their text -- for example, if it needs to be longer or shorter. Rewrite will then offer three rewritten versions that you can replace your work with.

It's worth noting that you'll have to sign in to your Microsoft account to use Rewrite, as it's "powered by a cloud-based service that requires authentication and authorization." Microsoft is launching this feature in preview on Windows 11 in the US, France, UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany. In July, Microsoft rolled out spellcheck and autocorrect for Notepad.

Over 60 classic Sega games are being delisted from digital stores, including Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe and Jet Set Radio. From a report: Starting on 6th December at 11:59pm PST (so, 7.59am on 7th December, for those of us in the UK), the affected games will no longer be available to purchase. Of course, if you already have a game in your library, it will remain available to download and play as and when.

In a FAQ, Sega noted select individual classic titles will remain playable for those among us who have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. No explanation was given for why these changes are being made.

The UK will bring in legislation to safeguard against the risks of AI in the next year, technology secretary Peter Kyle has said, as he pledged to invest in the infrastructure that will underpin the sector's growth. From a report: Kyle told the Financial Times' Future of AI summit on Wednesday that Britain's voluntary agreement on AI testing was "working, it's a good code" but that the long-awaited AI bill would be focused on making such accords with leading developers legally binding. The legislation, which Kyle said would be presented to MPs in the current parliament, will also turn the UK's AI Safety Institute into an arms-length government body, giving it "the independence to act fully in the interests of British citizens."

At present, the body is a directorate of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. At the UK-organised AI safety summit last November, companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic signed a "landmark" but non-binding agreement allowing partner governments to test their forthcoming large language models for risks and vulnerabilities before they were released to consumers. Kyle said that while he was "not fatalistic" about advancements in AI, "citizens need to know that we are mitigating the potential risks."