fidzu : computers

"Can a company take away something you've already paid for?" asks the BBC. "In the world of online video games, some already do." Publishers can decide to switch off a game's servers, often leaving it effectively unplayable. Stop Killing Games, a growing consumer rights campaign started by American YouTuber Ross Scott in 2024, is challenging that practice. In January, the group submitted a petition featuring nearly 1.3 million signatures to the European Commission, triggering a public hearing in the European Parliament in April. What began as an online campaign is now awaiting a decision from one of the EU's most powerful institutions... Scott's campaign began following an announcement from the major studio Ubisoft, saying it would shut down the online-only racing game The Crew in 2024... Ubisoft has already defended its position in court. Responding to a proposed class-action lawsuit brought by two The Crew players in California, the studio argued that customers had purchased a licence to use the game, not unlimited ownership rights, and that players had been warned online services would not be available forever. The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice in June 2025, after the plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew the case. The wider games industry has also pushed back against the campaign. Video Games Europe, which represents many of the industry's largest publishers, said shutting down online services "must be an option" when games are no longer commercially viable. It also warned that some of the campaign's proposals could make online-only games significantly more expensive to develop. "In no way are we asking companies to keep servers running or services going, they can end it any time they want," said Scott. Instead, he and his fellow campaigners argue that when a game is shut down it should be done "responsibly", with publishers considering "end-of-life plans" such as updating the game to work offline or releasing software that allows players to continue running it. Two key points from the article: "In March, French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir launched legal action against Ubisoft over the shutdown of The Crew, arguing that players were misled about the permanence of their purchase and that some of the company's contract terms were unfair." "The European Commission must respond to the European Citizens' Initiative - the petition brought by the group - by 27 July." Thanks to Alain Williams - Slashdot reader #2,972 - for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

07 Jun 2026 7:10pm GMT

I've been using Fedora Silverblue on my desktop and laptop for the past, what, five years? Silverblue is Fedora's main atomic variant, a spiritual counterpart to Fedora Workstation. I also make niri, a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor. In other words, a core system component that you cannot properly test from inside a container or VM-you really want it directly on the host. So, why would I choose an… immutable distro? How does that even work? ↫ Ivan Molodetskikh That's a great question, and as immutable or immutable-like Linux distributions become more popular and widespread - and eventually the default download option for many distributions, I'm sure - articles like these are quite important. I'm sure quite a few developers discarded the idea of using something like Silverblue because they assumed it wouldn't be fit for purpose, but if the developer of Niri makes it work, I'm fairly sure anybody can.

07 Jun 2026 6:05pm GMT

x86CSS is a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator/computer. Yes, the Cascading Style Sheets CSS. No JavaScript required. What you're seeing above is a C program that was compiled using GCC into native 8086 machine code being executed fully within CSS. ↫ Lyra Rebane Hand-written CSS, no JavaScript, and effectively no HTML. Wizardry.

07 Jun 2026 5:57pm GMT

Yesterday 2026's International Obfuscated C Code Contest concluded, with 22 new winners announced in a special three-hour livestreamed ceremony! Started 42 years ago, it's been described as the internet's longest-running contest, with entrants concocting convoluted programs glorying in the C programming language's subtleties, all while having some fun. And "For IOCCC29, the volume and quality of submissions were at near-historic heights," explains its home page. There's a "Tetris-optimized" GameBoy emulator with source code that looks like a GameBoy, as well as a quasi-Rogue-like game voted "most likely to teleport." Awards were also given for the best imaginary emulator (a virtual machine in 366 bytes of C) and the best fractional emulator (a maze generator for the Commodore 64). But every one of the 22 winning programs seems wildly creative... Quine Pong. "Running the program produces the source code to generate the next frame, formatted to display the current frame. By repeatedly compiling and running each successive frame, you can play the game. To move, pass either "w" (up) or "e" (down) as an argument..." A winning Taiwanese programmer formatted their source code in the shape of a Tardis from Doctor Who - code that displays an intricate ASCII animation of Doctor Who's 1963 opening title sequence. One winning entry emulates an IBM 7040 mainframe, first converting a program (encoded in whitespace) into ASCII-character drawings of punchcards for a FORTRAN program - and then executing that program to calculate the light visible to an observer looking at black hole, ultimately creating an image. It's all recreating what astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet had to do in 1978 to generate the first-ever simulated photograph of a black hole (on an IBM 7040 mainframe). "The entry can also run other FORTRAN programs - but "they must be provided as a deck of punch cards... Tools have been provided to convert to/from decks and to interpret..." "We have added fun challenges to this year's winning entries competition..." the web site notes. "After you figure out what a given winning entry does, we encourage you to attempt the fun challenge!" Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader achowe for bringing the news (who has submitted winning entries in four different decades, starting in 1991 and continuing through 2025) - and who won again this year for a program simulating the Space Invaders-like game from Casio's 1980 MG-880 calculator. Follow the IOCCC on Mastodon.

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07 Jun 2026 5:34pm GMT

The new James Bond-themed videogame 007 First Light had a budget of 1.3 billion Danish krone - a little more than USD $202 million, reports IGN, citing a report from Denmark's public service broadcaster. "Denmark's TV 2 said that makes 007 First Light the most expensive entertainment product in the country's history" - and the game "still has some way to go before breaking even." 007 First Light is estimated to have sold 2.2 million copies, generating $150 million in revenue... [Saturday IGM reported sales had jumped to 3 million copies.] The only official sales data we have comes from developer IO Interactive, which said that 007 First Light had become the fastest-selling game in the company's history, shifting 1.5 million copies in its first 24 hours... The impressive sales milestone was achieved without the aid of the Nintendo Switch 2 version, which is due out this summer. The James Bond adventure is also the highest rated IOI game ever, with an 87 on Metacritic... The developer has said it wants to make a trilogy of James Bond games. Game-tracking company Alinea Analytics tweeted their estimates that 55.1% of sales were on PS5, 33.1% on Steam, and 11.8% on Xbox (Xbox console, Windows, and cloud combined). And Polygon reports that new downloadable game content was announced Friday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

07 Jun 2026 4:34pm GMT

How accurate does an AI system need to be?

07 Jun 2026 11:08am GMT

Those ousted included ADA journal editor-in-chief Steven Kahn and former ADA president Desmond Schatz

06 Jun 2026 8:53pm GMT

What's the difference between a person, an artifact, and an ecosystem?

06 Jun 2026 11:15am GMT

RISC-V has been in the "promising" phase for a long time now, especially for general purpose computing, never really breaking through into the mainstream in any measurable way. While I think that breakthrough is still relatively far away, we now do have newer RISC-V SoCs on the market supporting the RVA23 baseline RISC-V profile. One of them is the SpacemiT Key Stone KЗ, which promises to deliver a massive performance increase over previous RISC-V offerings. It's exactly this chip that's finding its way into complete, turnkey mini PC solutions, like this one from a company called Firefly. The base model comes with 8GB of LDDPR5 RAM and 128GB of storage, at a price of about €300 or so (there's also a 32GB/128GB model at well over €600). This is the first time I'm looking at a complete RISC-V solution where I feel like it might actually make for a good moment to jump in for us enthusiasts. No, the performance won't rival anything Intel or AMD has to offer, but it seems capable enough for a lot of day-to-day tasks, and I'm curious to see just how far along the Linux world is when it comes to RISC-V support. It's not part of our current set of fundraiser incentives, but if you'd like to see this RISC-V mini PC reviewed here on OSNews, you can always donate and add a note that you specifically want to see such a review (so I can gauge interest not just from our few commenters, but also from the more than 99% of our readers who only lurk). As always, you can donate through Ko-Fi, or, if you're European, via a SEPA direct bank transfer (Name: Thom Holwerda - IBAN: SE08 8000 0820 1684 4657 8414 - BIC: SWEDSESS).

05 Jun 2026 3:49pm GMT

Good morning from JetBrains Berlin office!

01 Jun 2026 12:00am GMT

Just trying to answer one simple question: What if the terminal was 3D?

11 May 2026 12:00am GMT

Break the pattern today or the loop will repeat tomorrow.

18 Apr 2026 12:00am GMT