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A wealth of promising home-grown titles from the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 back in June gave existing users plenty of reasons to stay subscribed.

Xbox Game Pass has had a really solid July for content, and it’ll get even sweeter if the rumors of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 hitting the service soon pan out.

I wrote recently about how games might not be enough to find those elusive “new” users in an article linked below, revolving around the dilemma that the overall number of “core” console players simply isn’t growing.

While speaking to developers at shows over the past year, a lot of the discourse revolves around “black hole” games like Fortnite and Roblox, which vacuum up users and turn them into mono-gamers with no interest in playing anything else.

Xbox Game Pass is an attempt to cut through that trend in the name of supporting and showcasing the variety of art the industry has to offer — meeting new customer cohorts halfway.

The vastness of its Activision-Blizzard purchase seems to have led to a lost couple of years of momentum for Xbox as a brand, with attention focused solely on its variety of court cases.

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Members of the Recording Industry Association of Japan had taken legal action in the U.S. to demand information on Hikari No Akari’s operator from California-based Cloudflare, whose content delivery network the site had used.

“We’ll use information that Cloudflare will disclose to hold the website operator responsible and take other legal action,” an RIAJ spokesperson said.

The website received roughly 15 million visits over the past year, 75% of which were from countries outside Japan, such as Indonesia, the U.S. and France.

“Unlike videos or published materials, pirated works of music don’t need to be translated for anyone to enjoy,” says Hiroyuki Nakajima, an attorney versed in content piracy.

The RIAJ took a similar step in 2023, forcing the closure of another piracy website that August via legal action in the U.S.

This site, which had linked to illegal downloads of J-pop for more than two years, had not shut down as the trade group had demanded.

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Greg Kroah-Hartman on Friday sent out all of the USB/Thunderbolt subsystem feature updates destined for the Linux 6.11 kernel of which there are many different patches across the board.

The USB subsystem pull has the usual wide variety of changes from new hardware support to other clean-ups and fixes/features.

• Enabling Cache-Coherent Interconnect (CCI) support for the AMD-Xilinx DWC3 controller.

• Thunderbolt now has sideband register access via DebugFS for debugging.

• Lenovo Yoga C630 driver and DeviceTree bindings for the embedded controller (EC).

• The USB gadget driver for MINI 2.0 support has fixed the incorrect default MIDI2 protocol setup.

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Recently, a newsletter by Tom Warren over at The Verge suggested that Microsoft has been exploring giving up on marketing its Xbox brand in Europe and other regions, in favor of the United States and other territories where it is more entrenched.

Flatt described his team’s efforts as “scrappy,” which is not exactly what I would personally want to hear from one of the world’s top three most valuable companies, but Microsoft does find itself in a difficult macroeconomic confluence.

Microsoft’s lack of visible urgency when it comes to Surface, Xbox, and even Windows itself, could be blamed for the struggles of an entire raft of products in recent years, even before we discuss things like software quality and customer service.

I felt like Hellblade 2 marketing was quite visible when I visited London recently, as well as across social media, but sales for the game have reportedly been quite poor.

It would be convenient if we could split into multiple timelines and examine the outcomes of binary decisions, but it’s true that the overall global console user base hasn’t really grown in years, despite the marketing from whoever is involved.

Despite all this, Microsoft has been touting its biggest ever Xbox presence for Europe’s big Gamescom convention later this summer in Cologne, Germany.

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Campaigners say the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society.

Supermarkets, banks, pubs, cafes, train stations and airports were all hit by the failure of Microsoft systems on Friday, leaving many unable to accept electronic payments.

The Payment Choice Alliance (PCA), which campaigns against the move towards a cashless society, lists 23 firms and groups, at least some of whose outlets take only credit or debit cards.

Cash payments increased for the first time in a decade last year, according to UK Finance, which represents banks.

The GMB Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that “cash is a vital part of how our communities operate”.

In March, McDonald’s, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Gregg’s suffered problems with their payment systems.

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With Linux 6.11 support for the Lenovo Yoga Slim7x and ASUS Vivobook S15 are upstreamed for some of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite powered laptops.

But for follow-on kernel cycles you can expect yet more Snapdragon X1 Elite/Plus powered laptop support to appear with new DeviceTree additions.

On Friday, Linaro engineer Konrad Dybcio sent out the patches for enabling the X1 Elite powered Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 laptop.

Friday saw the initial DeviceTree patches posted for enabling the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 to let it boot up under Linux rather than Microsoft Windows.

The three patches getting the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 running under Linux have been successfully tested for input, NVMe, WiFi, USB-C ports, GPU, display, and DSPs.

The ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 is priced at around ~$1754 USD for boasting a 14-inch 1920 x 1200 display, X Elite X1E-78-100 SoC, 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, 1TB SSD, 1080p web camera, and a three year warranty.

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The SLAB pull request landed in Linux 6.11 Git on Thursday with kmem_buckets-based hardening of kernel memory allocations.

This hardening is the latest Linux security improvement addressed by Google’s Kees Cook.

This may very slightly increase memory fragmentation, though in practice it’s only a handful of extra pages since the bulk of user-controlled allocations are relatively long-lived."

Addressing these cases is limited in scope, so isolating these kinds of interfaces will not become an unbounded game of whack-a-mole.

Note that these caches are specifically flagged with SLAB_NO_MERGE, since merging would defeat the entire purpose of the mitigation.

This dedicated bucket allocator landed in the Linux 6.11 kernel yesterday via the SLAB pull request.

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There are reports of IT outages affecting major institutions in Australia and internationally.

The ABC is experiencing a major network outage, along with several other media outlets.

Crowd-sourced website Downdetector is listing outages for Foxtel, National Australia Bank and Bendigo Bank.

Follow our live blog as we bring you the latest updates.

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A Raspberry Pi camera is orbiting the Earth, attached to ESA’s YPSat, a week after both were supposed to have burned up upon re-entering the atmosphere with the upper stage of the Ariane 6.

Built to last just three hours, the payload was meant to have re-entered with the upper stage on Tuesday last week – July 9 – and burned up in the atmosphere.

However, a problem with an Auxiliary Propulsion Unit (APU) coupled with the failure of the Vinci engine on the stage to start has meant that YPSat has been able to spend a bit longer in orbit than its designers had planned, even if its batteries are likely long dead by now.

YPSat aimed to acquire imagery of the fairing and payload separations, as well as snapping pictures from the top of the upper stage before transmitting the recorded data back to Earth ahead of the expiry of its power source and reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

While YPSat appears to have worked perfectly, from detecting lift-off, through to capturing the moment of fairing separation and taking images of Earth from orbit, the reentry bit did not go so well.

YPSat, with its Raspberry Pi image hardware, remains in space until the orbit of the upper stage of the Ariane 6 finally decays and the payload is destroyed.

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With the maturity of the EXT4 file-system it’s not too often seeing any huge feature additions for this commonly used Linux file-system but there’s still the occasional wild performance optimization to uncover… With Linux 6.11 the EXT4 file-system can see upwards of a 20% performance boost in some scenarios.

Ted Ts’o sent out the EXT4 updates today for Linux 6.11.

He explained in that pull request: "Many cleanups and bug fixes in ext4, especially for the fast commit feature.

Up to 20% faster for fast devices using async direct I/O thanks to JBD2 optimizations.

Indeed the patch from Huawei’s Zhang Yi to speed up jbd2_transaction_committed() shows off some great improvements:

It’s great continuing to see EXT4 uncover new performance optimizations.

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The date for the introduction of the EU’s new entry-exit system has been pushed back again until November, allaying fears of long queues at the border during the October half-term holidays.

The launch of the new biometric checks for foreign travellers, including Britons, entering the EU, has been delayed from 6 October until at least 10 November, with many smaller airports yet to have facilities in place.

The move will again raise questions over the readiness of a system that has been long delayed from the planned 2021 start, with the French insisting the additional border controls should not be introduced before the Paris Olympics.

Under the entry-exit system (EES), non-EU citizens will have to register their biometric information – including fingerprints and facial scans – at the border, under the supervision of an EU officer, on their first visit.

There have been warnings of long queues at British points of entry – including the Port of Dover, and Eurostar’s St Pancras terminal – where the French and EU border is physically located in England, before passengers board ferries or trains.

The cross-Channel train operator said the process would add only a few seconds to border queues and not cause chaos, although passengers would have to ensure they arrived in time for the additional layer of biometric checks.

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Microsoft is integrating Nvidia’s GeForce Now service into its store pages for Xbox games.

At the time of publication, the new “play with cloud” button isn’t available just yet, so it’s not clear whether this is simply a link to the main homepage of GeForce Now or whether this deep links and launches the game directly on Nvidia’s cloud gaming service.

Nvidia’s GeForce Now RTX 4080 tier is the most impressive cloud gaming service available right now, with Nvidia even claiming the end-to-end latency beats an Xbox Series X running locally on a 60Hz TV.

Microsoft and Nvidia are no strangers when it comes to cloud gaming partnerships, though.

Both companies signed a 10-year deal to allow Nvidia to license Xbox PC games for GeForce Now, including Activision Blizzard titles.

Nvidia also rolled out an update to GeForce Now earlier this year that allows members to sync their Xbox accounts and Microsoft Store purchases to the cloud gaming service.

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Wlroots 0.18 recently debuted as the newest version of this Wayland library born out of the Sway compositor project.

With wlroots 0.18 is support for new Wayland protocols and other exciting features.

New protocols enabled by wlroots 0.18 include linux-drm-syncobj-v1 for explicit synchronization, alpha-modifier-v1 for alpha channel support on surfaces, ext-foreign-toplevel-list-v1 as a protocol for taskbars and app switchers, and ext-transient-seat-v1 for better handling VNC/remote use-cases.

There is also a new stateless render API for reading back pixel buffers from the GPU.

Overall the wlroots 0.18 feature update is a very exciting release with all the new functionality included for Wayland compositors leveraging this open-source library.

Downloads and more details on the wlroots 0.18 release via FreeDesktop.org GitLab.

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2024 has had plenty of upsets.

Games from small teams — like Palworld, Balatro, and Animal Well — rocketed up the sales charts, outstripping titles with much larger budgets.

Meanwhile, the pace of big releases from major companies like Sony and Nintendo has slowed, as mass layoffs have continued to rattle the increasingly consolidated industry.

As perilous as the year has been for people who make games, it’s offered a diverse bounty for those who play them.

NPR network staffers and contributors have explored this breadth, from cozy puzzlers like Botany Manor to meditative adventures like 1000xResist to updated juggernauts like Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

Sortable by platform and genre, we invite you to find your next favorite game on the list below.

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Major record labels sued Verizon on Friday, alleging that the Internet service provider violated copyright law by continuing to serve customers accused of pirating music.

They say that “Verizon has knowingly contributed to, and reaped substantial profits from, massive copyright infringement committed by tens of thousands of its subscribers.”

Cox received support from groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which warned that the big money judgment could cause broadband providers to disconnect people from the Internet based only on accusations of copyright infringement.

While judges in the Cox case reversed a vicarious liability verdict, they affirmed the jury’s additional finding of willful contributory infringement and ordered a new damages trial.

“Yet rather than taking any steps to address its customers’ illegal use of its network, Verizon deliberately chose to ignore Plaintiffs’ notices, willfully blinding itself to that information and prioritizing its own profits over its legal obligations.”

The lawsuit also complains that Verizon hasn’t made it easier for copyright owners to file complaints about Internet users:

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"I’m very aware that I could wake up tomorrow and my job could be gone,” says Jess Hyland.The video game artist says the industry she’s spent almost 15 years working in is on “shaky” ground at the moment.A boom in players and profits during the pandemic sparked a flurry of investments, expansions and acquisitions that, in hindsight, now look short-sighted.Gaming remains profitable, but thousands of workers worldwide have lost their jobs, and successful studios have been shut down over the past two years.More closures and cuts are feared.

There’s lots of worry about the future," says Jess.Some bosses are talking up the potential of generative AI - the tech behind tools such as ChatGPT - as a potential saviour.Tech giant Nvidia has shown off impressive development tool prototypes, and gaming industry heavyweights such as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft are investing in the tech.It’s claimed AI tools can save development time, free workers up to focus on creativity and provide a more personalised user experience.With budgets at the blockbuster end of the industry spiralling as audience expectations rise with them, it sounds like a perfect solution.But not to everyone.

Publicly available AI image generators, for example, can quickly output impressive-looking results from simple text prompts, but are famously poor at rendering hands.

It’s a view echoed by Chris Knowles, a former senior engine developer at UK gaming firm Jagex, known for its Runescape title.

Copyright concerns over generative AI - currently the subject of several ongoing legal cases - are one of the biggest barriers to its wider use in gaming right now.Tools are trained on vast quantities of text and pictures scraped from the internet and, like many artists, Jess believes it amounts to “mass copyright infringement”.Some studios are exploring systems trained on internal data, and third parties advertising ethical tools that claim to work off authorised sources are springing up.Even then, the fear is that AI will be used to turn out assets such as artwork and 3D models at scale, and the expectation on workers will be to produce more output.

The AI industry is currently trying to reassure governments and regulators over concerns about its future use, as shown by a recent law passed by the EUIt will also have to work hard to win over another group - gamers.Online shooter The Finals received a backlash over its use of synthesised voice lines, and developer Square Enix was criticised for the limited use of generated art in its multiplayer game Foamstars.Jess believes growing talk about AI has made gamers “think about what they love about games and what’s special about that - sharing experiences crafted by other humans”.

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True, the Linux Foundation events all now come with child support for young parents, but my expert guestimate is the average age is still well into the 30s.

More specifically, the Cloud Native Computing Foundations (CNCF)'s KubeCons have many tracks for people who want to learn the ins and outs of Kubernetes and other cloud-native programs.

The OSPO for Good conference proposed solutions that have been suggested before, such as hackathons, to engage young developers in open source coding.

As David Nalley, president of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and director of open source strategy at Amazon Web Services (AWS), said at the conference: "Getting people to maintain old code isn’t easy.

… I thought if I could hold on just a bit longer, I could help maintain the focus on long term development to improve the user experience.

She also runs the LFX Mentorship program, which seeks to sponsor and train the next generation of open source developers and leaders.

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Energy think tank Ember found that major growth in wind and solar helped push global electricity production past this milestone in 2023.

Its authors say that this rapid growth has brought the world to a crucial turning point where fossil fuel generation starts to decline.

“You also have the invasion of Ukraine which increased the sense of urgency around transitioning to clean power and getting off relying on fossil fuels - not just coal but also gas, and particularly from Russia.

Plans were put in place to help individual member states reach renewable energy targets and deploy technologies at a national scale.

“Certainly you can’t ignore that there was some demand [based] impact on the decrease in use of fossil fuels, but also there was a significant role of wind and solar replacing it.”

Normally this would have meant that the clean energy capacity added around the world last year would have caused fossil fuel generation to drop by 1.1 per cent.

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One of the telltale signs of these stability issues on Raptor Lake is the “out of video memory” error message that pops up in games such as Fortnite.

Cassells claims that his studio has received thousands of crash reports from players using 13th and 14th-gen Core chips and that his development team has personally experienced “frequent instability” on their own Raptor Lake-powered PCs.

But Cassells reckons there’s a more substantial underlying problem here than mere glitches of instability solved by motherboard configurations.

“Over the last 3–4 months, we have observed that CPUs initially working well deteriorate over time, eventually failing,” he claims.

This 13900K went into a gaming PC with a lower-end motherboard that by design can’t max out the chip’s power usage.

Cassells also recommends players, whether they’re hosting their own servers or just playing a game, to avoid Raptor Lake processors.

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System76 continues working vigorously on COSMIC, their Rust-written Linux desktop environment being written for Pop!_OS and to see availability on other Linux distributions as well.

They are finishing up last minute changes before putting the flag on a COSMIC alpha release.

System76 began their latest status update by noting there are around 20 issues to be resolved before issuing the COSMIC alpha release.

The hope remains that the COSMIC alpha version will be out before the end of July.

• COSMIC’s Input Settings has seen completed support for customizable shortcuts.

• Compositor multi-threading by having cosmic-comp use multiple threads that can be particularly helpful for high refresh rate displays and multi-monitor setups.

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