In 1994, college student Jim Hall created FreeDOS (in response to Microsoft's plan to gradually phase out MS-DOS). After celebrating its 30th anniversary last week, Hill wrote a new article Saturday for OpenSource.net: "What I've learned about Open Source community over 30 years."

Lessons include "every Open Source project needs a website," but also "consider other ways to raise awareness about your Open Source software project." ("In the FreeDOS Project, we've found that posting videos to our YouTube channel is an excellent way to help people learn about FreeDOS... The more information you can share about your Open Source project, the more people will find it familiar and want to try it out.")

But the larger lesson is that "Open Source projects must be grounded in community." Without open doors for new ideas and ongoing development, even the most well-intentioned project becomes a stagnant echo chamber...

Maintain open lines of communication... This can take many forms, including an email list, discussion board, or some other discussion forum. Other forums where people can ask more general "Help me" questions are okay but try to keep all discussions about project development on your official discussion channel.
The last of its seven points stresses that "An Open Source project isn't really Open Source without source code that everyone can download, study, use, modify and share" (urging careful selection for your project's licensing). But the first point emphasizes that "It's more than just code," and Hall ends his article by attributing FreeDOS's three-decade run to "the great developers and users in our community." In celebrating FreeDOS, we are celebrating everyone who has created programs, fixed bugs, added features, translated messages, written documentation, shared articles, or contributed in some other way to the FreeDOS Project... Here's looking forward to more years to come!
Jim Hall is also Slashdot reader #2,985, and back in 2000 he answered questions from Slashdot's readers — just six years after starting the project. "Jim isn't rich or famous," wrote RobLimo, "just an old-fashioned open source contributor who helped start a humble but useful project back in 1994 and still works on it as much as he can."

As the years piled up, Slashdot ran posts celebrating FreeDOS's 10th, 15th, and 20th anniversary.

And then for FreeDOS's 25th, Hall returned to Slashdot to answer more questions from Slashdot readers...

For the first two decades of the social internet, lurkers ruled. Among Gen Z, they're in the minority, according to survey data from YouTube. From a report: Tech industry insiders used to cite a rule of thumb stating that only one in ten of an online community's users generally post new content, with the masses logging on only to consume images, video or other updates. Now younger generations are flipping that divide, a survey by the video platform said. YouTube found that 65 percent of Gen Z, which it defined as people between the ages of 14 and 24, describe themselves as video content creators -- making lurkers a minority.

The finding came from responses from 350 members of Gen Z in the U.S., out of a wider survey that asked thousands of people about how they spend time online, including whether they consider themselves video creators. YouTube did the survey in partnership with research firm SmithGeiger, as part of its annual report on trends on the platform. YouTube's report says that after watching videos online, many members of Gen Z respond with videos of their own, uploading their own commentary, reaction videos, deep dives into content posted by others and more. This kind of interaction often develops in response to videos on pop culture topics such as "RuPaul's Drag Race" or the Fallout video game series. Fan-created content can win more watch time than the original source material, the report says.

Al Michaels, the 79-year-old American broadcaster, who first covered the Olympics decades ago, is returning to broadcasting via an AI clone. NBCUniversal and Peacock will use AI-generated narration by Al Michaels for daily customized highlight reels of the Summer Olympics. Officials say they anticipate seven million different variations of the customized highlights throughout the games. The New York Times reports: Al Michaels, the 79-year-old American broadcaster, who first covered the Olympics decades ago, is coming back to primetime. It does raise a key question, one that recalls Mr. Michaels's most famous Olympic call: Do NBCUniversal executives believe in miracles? NBC has been exclusively broadcasting the Olympics in the United States since 1996, and the network frequently finds itself subject to intense public scrutiny for its coverage of the Games. [...]

Subscribers who want the daily Peacock highlight reel will be able choose the Olympic events that interest them most, and the types of highlights they want to see, such as viral clips, gold medalists or elimination events. From there, Peacock's A.I. machines will get to work each evening cranking out the most notable moments and putting them together in a tidy customized package. Mr. Michaels's recreated voice will be piped over the reels. (Humans will make quality control checks on the A.I. highlight reels.)

YouTube is negotiating with major record labels to license songs for AI tools that clone popular artists' music, according to Financial Times. The Google-owned platform is offering upfront payments to Sony, Warner, and Universal to secure rights for training AI software, aiming to launch new features this year. But there are roadblocks to the deal, the story adds: However, many artists remain fiercely opposed to AI music generation, fearing it could undermine the value of their work. Any move by a label to force their stars into such a scheme would be hugely controversial. [...]

YouTube last year began testing a generative AI tool that lets people create short music clips by entering a text prompt. The product, initially named "Dream Track," was designed to imitate the sound and lyrics of well-known singers. But only 10 artists agreed to participate in the test phase, including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and John Legend, and Dream Track was made available to a just small group of creators.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Last week, an in-depth investigative report from JBTC revealed that Korean Internet provider KT, formerly known as Korea Telecom, distributed malware onto subscribers' computers to interfere with and block torrent traffic. File-sharing continues to be very popular in South Korea, but operates differently than in most other countries. "Webhard" services, short for Web Hard Drive, are particularly popular. These are paid BitTorrent-assisted services, which also offer dedicated web seeds, to ensure that files remain available.

Webhard services rely on the BitTorrent-enabled 'Grid System', which became so popular in Korea that ISPs started to notice it. Since these torrent transfers use a lot of bandwidth, which is very costly in the country, providers would rather not have this file-sharing activity on their networks. KT, one of South Korea's largest ISPs with over 16 million subscribers, was previously caught meddling with the Grid System. In 2020, their throttling activities resulted in a court case, where the ISP cited 'network management' costs as the prime reason to interfere. The Court eventually sided with KT, ending the case in its favor, but that wasn't the end of the matter. An investigation launched by the police at the time remains ongoing. New reports now show that the raid on KT's datacenter found that dozens of devices were used in the 'throttling process' and they were doing more than just limiting bandwidth.

When Webhard users started reporting problems four years ago, they didn't simply complain about slow downloads. In fact, the main concern was that several Grid-based Webhard services went offline or reported seemingly unexplainable errors. Since all complaining users were KT subscribers, fingers were pointed in that direction. According to an investigation by Korean news outlet JBTC, the Internet provider actively installed malware on computers of Webhard services. This activity was widespread and effected an estimated 600,000 KT subscribers. The Gyeonggi Southern Police Agency, which carried out the raid and investigation, believes this was an organized hacking attempt. A dedicated KT team allegedly planted malware to eavesdrop on subscribers and interfere with their private file transfers. [...] Why KT allegedly distributed the malware and what it precisely intended to do is unclear. The police believe there were internal KT discussions about network-related costs, suggesting that financial reasons played a role.

While NASA engineers review propulsion system data, Boeing's Starliner will remain docked at the ISS longer than planned, with a new departure date yet to be specified due to upcoming spacewalks and ongoing engineering reviews. "After repeated delays, the spacecraft was set to leave the outpost on June 25 and land at White Sands, New Mexico," notes The Register. NASA has stated that the crew is not in a hurry to leave, with sufficient supplies available, and the delay will allow more time to address helium leaks and thruster issues observed during docking. From the report: The Starliner will need to depart the ISS before August without some additional engineering analysis. During the post-docking news conference, Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, gave a figure of 45 days for the docked duration, meaning a docking would have to occur during the latter half of July at the very latest. The delay will remove any potential conflict with the upcoming spacewalks and give engineers more time to review data from the Starliner's propulsion system. The vehicle has been bedeviled by helium leaks and thruster problems. Once the Starliner commences its return to Earth, the service module where the problematic hardware is located will be discarded, depriving engineers of an avenue of investigation.

Stich said, "We are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process. We are letting the data drive our decision-making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking. Additionally, given the duration of the mission, it is appropriate for us to complete an agency-level review, similar to what was done ahead of NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 return after two months on orbit, to document the agency's formal acceptance on proceeding as planned." The Starliner has been cleared for use as a return vehicle in the event of an emergency.

In the highly unlikely event that NASA opts not to use the Starliner as a crew return vehicle, the agency has a few options open to it. One could be to remove two crew members from the next Crew Dragon launch -- currently set for the latter half of August -- or use an upcoming Soyuz, although the latter requires custom seat liners for the crew. During the June 18 teleconference Stich confirmed that the team had already cleared the vehicle for a contingency or emergency return, and added "I think we will work through each of these issues and we will get to a point where we can bring Butch and Suni back in Starliner."

Automated license plate readers "pose risks to public safety," argues the EFF, "that may outweigh the crimes they are attempting to address in the first place." When law enforcement uses automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to document the comings and goings of every driver on the road, regardless of a nexus to a crime, it results in gargantuan databases of sensitive information, and few agencies are equipped, staffed, or trained to harden their systems against quickly evolving cybersecurity threats. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, released an advisory last week that should be a wake up call to the thousands of local government agencies around the country that use ALPRs to surveil the travel patterns of their residents by scanning their license plates and "fingerprinting" their vehicles. The bulletin outlines seven vulnerabilities in Motorola Solutions' Vigilant ALPRs, including missing encryption and insufficiently protected credentials...

Unlike location data a person shares with, say, GPS-based navigation app Waze, ALPRs collect and store this information without consent and there is very little a person can do to have this information purged from these systems... Because drivers don't have control over ALPR data, the onus for protecting the data lies with the police and sheriffs who operate the surveillance and the vendors that provide the technology. It's a general tenet of cybersecurity that you should not collect and retain more personal data than you are capable of protecting. Perhaps ironically, a Motorola Solutions cybersecurity specialist wrote an article in Police Chief magazine this month that public safety agencies "are often challenged when it comes to recruiting and retaining experienced cybersecurity personnel," even though "the potential for harm from external factors is substantial." That partially explains why, more than 125 law enforcement agencies reported a data breach or cyberattacks between 2012 and 2020, according to research by former EFF intern Madison Vialpando. The Motorola Solutions article claims that ransomware attacks "targeting U.S. public safety organizations increased by 142 percent" in 2023.

Yet, the temptation to "collect it all" continues to overshadow the responsibility to "protect it all." What makes the latest CISA disclosure even more outrageous is it is at least the third time in the last decade that major security vulnerabilities have been found in ALPRs... If there's one positive thing we can say about the latest Vigilant vulnerability disclosures, it's that for once a government agency identified and reported the vulnerabilities before they could do damage... The Michigan Cyber Command center found a total of seven vulnerabilities in Vigilant devices; two of which were medium severity and 5 of which were high severity vulnerabilities...

But a data breach isn't the only way that ALPR data can be leaked or abused. In 2022, an officer in the Kechi (Kansas) Police Department accessed ALPR data shared with his department by the Wichita Police Department to stalk his wife.
The article concludes that public safety agencies should "collect only the data they need for actual criminal investigations.

"They must never store more data than they adequately protect within their limited resources-or they must keep the public safe from data breaches by not collecting the data at all."

Filipe Esposito reports via 9to5Mac: When Apple introduced AirPods in 2016, the company also unveiled a new, easy and intuitive way to pair wireless accessories to iPhone and iPad. Rather than having to go to Bluetooth settings and press buttons, the system identifies the accessory nearby and prompts the user to pair it. With iOS 18, this quick pairing process will be available for the first time to accessory makers.

Called AccessorySetupKit, the new API gives third-party accessories the same setup experience as Apple accessories such as AirPods and AirTag. As soon as the iPhone or iPad running iOS 18 with the right app detects a compatible accessory, it will show the user a popup to confirm pairing with that device. With just a tap, the system will automatically handle all the Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity required by the accessory. This also means that users will no longer have to manually give Bluetooth and Wi-Fi permissions individually to that accessory's app.

If the accessory requires a more complex pairing process, such as confirming a PIN code, the iOS 18 API can also ask the user for this information without the need to open an app. Once the accessory has been paired, more information about it can be found in a new Accessories menu within the Privacy settings.

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium subscribers who use VPNs are reporting that their plans are being automatically canceled by the Google-owned company, according to multiple subscribers who have posted screenshots and descriptions of the issue on Reddit.

A Google support representative confirmed to PCMag that YouTube has started a crackdown. "YouTube has initiated the cancellation of premium memberships for accounts identified as having falsified signup country information," the Google support agent said via chat message. "Due to violating YouTube's Paid Terms of Service, these users will receive an email and an in-app notification informing them of the cancellation."

After years of playing second fiddle to Link in her own franchise, Princess Zelda is finally getting a video game of her own this fall. From a report: During today's Direct presentation, Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the franchise's first game to follow as Princess Zelda herself embarks on an adventure to save the world from destruction. After Ganon bests Link in battle, Zelda is left to her own devices to battle hordes of monsters that descend upon the game's take on Hyrule (which seems heavily inspired by 2019's Link's Awakening remake).

According to series producer Eiji Aonuma, Zelda will navigate and fight through the world somewhat differently in Echoes of Wisdom as she wields a magical staff known as the Tri Rod with the assistance of a fairy named Tri. The trailer details how Zelda will be able to use the Tri Rod to create "echoes" of objects and monsters she's previously encountered and use them to overcome obstacles.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called on Congress to require a tobacco-style warning for visitors to social media platforms. In an op-ed published in The New York Times, Murthy said the mental health crisis among young people is an urgent problem, with social media "an important contributor." He said his vision of the warning includes language that would alert users to the potential mental health harms of the websites and apps. "A surgeon general's warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe," he wrote.

In 1965, after the previous year's landmark report from Surgeon General Luther L. Terry that linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer and heart disease, Congress mandated unprecedented warning labels on packs of cigarettes, the first of which stated, "Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." Murthy said in the op-ed, "Evidence from tobacco labels shows that surgeon general's warnings can increase awareness and change behavior." But he acknowledged the limitations and said a label alone wouldn't make social media safe. Steps can be taken by Congress, social media companies, parents and others to mitigate the risks, ensure a safer experience online and protect children from possible harm, he wrote.

In the op-ed, Murthy linked the amount of time spent on social media to the increasing risk that children will experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. The American Psychological Association says teenagers spend nearly five hours every day on top platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. In a 2019 study, the association found the proportion of young adults with suicidal thoughts or other suicide-related outcomes increased 47% from 2008 to 2017, when social media use among that age group soared. And that was before the pandemic triggered a year's worth of virtual isolation for the U.S. In early 2021, amid continued pandemic lockdowns, Murthy called on social media platforms to "proactively enhance and contribute to the mental health and well-being of our children." [...] A surgeon general's public health advisory on social media's mental health published last year cited research finding that among its potential harms are exposure to violent and sexual content and to bullying, harassment and body shaming.

YouTube is piloting a new feature called "Notes" that allows viewers to add context and information under videos. The move comes as YouTube aims to minimize the spread of misinformation on its platform, particularly during the pivotal 2024 U.S. election year. The feature, similar to Community Notes on X (formerly Twitter), will initially be available on mobile in the U.S. in English.

ASUS has suddenly agreed "to overhaul its customer support and warranty systems," writes the hardware review site Gamers Nexus — after a three-video series on its YouTube channel documented bad and "potentially illegal" handling of customer warranties for the channel's 2.2 million viewers.

The Verge highlights ASUS's biggest change: If you've ever been denied a warranty repair or charged for a service that was unnecessary or should've been free, Asus wants to hear from you at a new email address. It claims those disputes will be processed by Asus' own staff rather than outsourced customer support agents.... The company is also apologizing today for previous experiences you might have had with repairs. "We're very sorry to anyone who has had a negative experience with our service team. We appreciate your feedback and giving us a chance to make amends."
It started five weeks ago when Gamers Nexus requested service for a joystick problem, according to a May 10 video. First they'd received a response wrongly telling them their damage was out of warranty — which also meant Asus could add a $20 shipping charge for the requested repair. "Somehow that turned into ASUS saying the LCD needs to be replaced, even though the joystick is covered under their repair policies," the investigators say in the video. [They also note this response didn't even address their original joystick problem — "only that thing that they had decided to find" — and that ASUS later made an out-of-the-blue reference to "liquid damage."] The repair would ultimately cost $191.47, with ASUS mentioning that otherwise "the unit will be sent back un-repaired and may be disassembled." ASUS gave them four days to respond, with some legalese adding that an out-of-warranty repair fee is non-refundable, yet still "does not guarantee that repairs can be made."

Even when ASUS later agreed to do a free "partial" repair (providing the requested in-warranty service), the video's investigators still received another email warning of "pending service cancellation" and return of the unit unless they spoke to "Invoice Quotation Support" immediately. The video-makers stood firm, and the in-warranty repair was later performed free — but they still concluded that "It felt like ASUS tried to scam us." ASUS's response was documented in a second video, with ASUS claiming it had merely been sending a list of "available" repairs (and promising that in the future ASUS would stop automatically including costs for the unrequested repair of "cosmetic imperfections" — and that they'd also change their automatic emails.)

Gamers Nexus eventually created a fourth, hour-long video confronting various company officials at Computex — which finally led to them publishing a list of ASUS's promised improvements on Friday. Some highlights:

• ASUS promises it's "created a Task Force team to retroactively go back through a long history of customer surveys that were negative to try and fix the issues." (The third video from Gamers Nexus warned ASUS was already on the government's radar over its handling of warranty issues.)

• ASUS also announced their repairs centers were no longer allowed to claim "customer-induced damage" (which Gamers Nexus believes "will remove some of the financial incentive to fail devices" to speed up workloads).

• ASUS is creating a new U.S. support center allowing customers to choose either a refurbished board or a longer repair.

Gamers Nexus says they already have devices at ASUS repair centers — under pseudonyms — and that they "plan to continue sampling them over the next 6-12 months so we can ensure these are permanent improvements." And there's one final improvement, according to Gamers Nexus. "After over a year of refusing to acknowledge the microSD card reader failures on the ROG Ally [handheld gaming console], ASUS will be posting a formal statement next week about the defect."

In a featured article for The Verge, David Pierce explores the world of competitive Excel, highlighting its rise from a hobbyist activity to a potential esport, showcased during the Excel World Championship in Las Vegas. Top spreadsheet enthusiasts competed at the MGM Grand to solve complex Excel challenges, emphasizing the transformative power and ubiquity of spreadsheets in both business and entertainment. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the report: Competitive Excel has been around for years, but only in a hobbyist way. Most of the people in this room full of actuaries, analysts, accountants, and investors play Excel the way I play Scrabble or do the crossword -- exercising your brain using tools you understand. But last year's competition became a viral hit on ESPN and YouTube, and this year, the organizers are trying to capitalize. After all, someone points out to me, poker is basically just math, and it's all over TV. Why not spreadsheets? Excel is a tool. It's a game. Now it hopes to become a sport. I've come to realize in my two days in this ballroom that understanding a spreadsheet is like a superpower. The folks in this room make their living on their ability to take some complex thing -- a company's sales, a person's lifestyle, a region's political leanings, a race car -- and pull it apart into its many component pieces. If you can reduce the world down to a bunch of rows and columns, you can control it. Manipulate it. Build it and rebuild it in a thousand new ways, with a couple of hotkeys and an undo button at the ready. A good spreadsheet shows you the universe and gives you the ability to create new ones. And the people in this room, in their dad jeans and short-sleeved button-downs, are the gods on Olympus, bending everything to their will.

There is one inescapably weird thing about competitive Excel: spreadsheets are not fun. Spreadsheets are very powerful, very interesting, very important, but they are for work. Most of what happens at the FMWC is, in almost every practical way, indistinguishable from the normal work that millions of people do in spreadsheets every day. You can gussy up the format, shorten the timelines, and raise the stakes all you want -- the reality is you're still asking a bunch of people who make spreadsheets for a living to just make more spreadsheets, even if they're doing it in Vegas. You really can't overstate how important and ubiquitous spreadsheets really are, though. "Electronic spreadsheets" actually date back earlier than computers and are maybe the single most important reason computers first became mainstream. In the late 1970s, a Harvard MBA student named Dan Bricklin started to dream up a software program that could automatically do the math he was constantly doing and re-doing in class. "I imagined a magic blackboard that if you erased one number and wrote a new thing in, all of the other numbers would automatically change, like word processing with numbers," he said in a 2016 TED Talk. This sounds quaint and obvious now, but it was revolutionary then. [...]

Competitive Excel has been around for years, but only in a hobbyist way. Most of the people in this room full of actuaries, analysts, accountants, and investors play Excel the way I play Scrabble or do the crossword -- exercising your brain using tools you understand. But last year's competition became a viral hit on ESPN and YouTube, and this year, the organizers are trying to capitalize. After all, someone points out to me, poker is basically just math, and it's all over TV. Why not spreadsheets? Excel is a tool. It's a game. Now it hopes to become a sport. I've come to realize in my two days in this ballroom that understanding a spreadsheet is like a superpower. The folks in this room make their living on their ability to take some complex thing -- a company's sales, a person's lifestyle, a region's political leanings, a race car -- and pull it apart into its many component pieces. If you can reduce the world down to a bunch of rows and columns, you can control it. Manipulate it. Build it and rebuild it in a thousand new ways, with a couple of hotkeys and an undo button at the ready. A good spreadsheet shows you the universe and gives you the ability to create new ones. And the people in this room, in their dad jeans and short-sleeved button-downs, are the gods on Olympus, bending everything to their will.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: NASA accidentally broadcast a simulation of astronauts being treated for decompression sickness on the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday, prompting speculation of an emergency in posts on social media. About 5:28 p.m. U.S. Central Time (2228 GMT), The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) live YouTube channel broadcast audio that indicated a crew member was experiencing the effects of decompression sickness (DCS), NASA said on its official ISS X account.

A female voice asks crew members to "get commander back in his suit", check his pulse and provide him with oxygen, later saying his prognosis was "tenuous", according to copies of the audio posted on social media. NASA did not verify the recordings or republish the audio. Several space enthusiasts posted a link to the audio on X with warnings that there was a serious emergency on the ISS. "This audio was inadvertently misrouted from an ongoing simulation where crew members and ground teams train for various scenarios in space and is not related to a real emergency," the ISS account post said. "There is no emergency situation going on aboard the International Space Station," it added.

Crew members on the ISS were in their sleep period at the time of the audio broadcast as they prepared for a spacewalk at 8 a.m. EDT on Thursday, the ISS post said. NASA's ISS YouTube channel -- at the time the audio was accidentally broadcast -- now shows an error message saying the feed has been interrupted.

T2's open development process and the collection of exotic, vintage and retro hardware can be followed live on YouTube and Twitch.

Now Slashdot reader ReneR writes: Embedded T2 Linux is known for its sophisticated cross compile features as well as supporting all CPU architectures, including: Alpha, Arc, ARM(64), Avr32, HPPA(64), IA64, M68k, MIPS(64), Nios2, PowerPC(64)(le), RISCV(64), s390x, SPARC(64), SuperH, x86(64). But now it's going Desktop!

24.6 comes as a major convenience update, with out-of-the-box Windows application compatibility as well as LibreOffice and Thunderbird cross-compiled and in the default base ISO for the most popular CPU architectures.

Continuing to keep Intel IA-64 Itanium alive, a major, up-to-3x performance improvement was found for OpenSSL, doubling crypto performance for many popular algorithms and SSH.

The project's CI unit testing was further expanded to now cover the whole installation in two variants. The graphical desktop defaults were also polished -- and a T2 branded wallpaper was added! ;-) The release contains 606 changesets, including approximately 750 package updates, 67 issues fixed, 80 packages or features added, 21 removed and 9 other improvements.

Announced during Microsoft's Xbox Games Showcase, Doom: The Dark Ages is id Software's next foray back into hell. [Also available for PS5 and PC.] Doom: The Dark Ages is a medieval spin on the Doom franchise, taking the Doom Slayer back to the beginning. It's coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one, sometime in 2025.

Microsoft's first trailer for Doom: The Dark Ages shows the frenetic, precision gameplay we've come to expect from the franchise — there's a lot of blasting and shooting and a chainsaw. Oh, and the Doom Slayer can ride a dragon?
"Before he became a hero he was the super weapon of gods and kings," says the trailer (which showcases the game's crazy-good graphics...) The 2020 game Doom Eternal sold 3 million copies in its first month, according to Polygon, with its game director telling the site in 2021 that "our hero is somewhat timeless — I mean, literally, he's immortal. So we could tell all kinds of stories..."

Other upcoming Xbox games were revealed too. Engadget is excited about the reboot of the first-person shooter Perfect Dark (first released in 2000, but now set in the near future). There's also Gears of War: E-Day, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, State of Decay 3, and Assassin's Creed Shadows, according to Xbox.com — plus "the announcement of three new Xbox Series X|S console options." [Engadget notes it's the first time Microsoft has offered a cheaper all-digital Xbox Series X with no disc drive.] "And on top of all that, we also brought the gameplay reveal of a brand-new Call of Duty game with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6."

Meanwhile, Friday's Summer Game Fest 2024 featured Star Wars Outlaws footage (which according to GamesRadar takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, featuring not just card games with Lando Calrissian but also Jabba the Hutt and a frozen Han Solo.) Engadget covered all the announcements from Game Fest, including the upcoming game Mixtape, which Engadget calls a "reality-bending adventure" with "a killer '80s soundtrack" about three cusp-of-adulthood teenagers who "Skate. Party. Avoid the law. Make out. Sneak out. Hang out..." for Xbox/PS5/PC.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: A YouTuber who posted a Fourth of July video in which passengers on a low-flying helicopter shot fireworks at a speeding Lamborghini is facing a federal charge tied to the stunt.

Suk Min Choi, 24, who runs a YouTube channel under the name Alex Choi, was charged Thursday with causing the placement of an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft, the Justice Department announced. He arranged to have the helicopter fly over the El Mirage Dry Lakebed near Los Angeles in June 2023 for a video titled "Destroying a Lamborghini With Fireworks," according to a complaint filed in the Central District Court of California. The video, released on July 4, shows scenes akin to an action film as Choi laughs while driving the Lamborghini and helicopter-launched fireworks ricochet off the car, enveloping it in sparks...

Choi faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the Justice Department.
More details from NBC Los Angeles: Federal authorities said radar data from the day of the video shoot showed that the helicopter left an airport in Pacoima, California, around 1:53 p.m. and turned toward El Mirage Lake, a dry lake in California, where the video was filmed. The helicopter's transponder was then turned off, according to the affidavit. The helicopter reappeared on the radar and flew back to the airport just before 9 p.m., the document says.

The pilot initially told an FAA inspector that he did not know anything about the El Mirage video, according to the affidavit. In a follow-up call, he told inspectors that he did not want Choi to know he was speaking with them and said "Choi was doing unsafe activities involving cars and aircraft." In January, the FAA issued an emergency order revoking the pilot's private pilot certification, the affidavit says.

Michael 'Mike' Karels, one of the authors of "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4Bsd Operating System" and a part of the Computer Systems Research Group at Berkeley, who received the USENIX Association Lifetime Achievement Award, has died. Longtime Slashdot reader bplipschitz shared the news.

The FreeBSD Foundation issued a statement in memory of Karels: "We are deeply saddened about the passing of Mike Karels, a pivotal figure in the history of BSD UNIX, a respected member of the FreeBSD community, and the Deputy Release Engineer for the FreeBSD Project. Mike's contributions to the development and advancement of BSD systems were profound and have left an indelible mark on the Project. Mike's vision and dedication were instrumental in shaping the FreeBSD we know and use today. His legacy will continue to inspire and guide us in our future endeavors."

Slashdot readers destinyland and LazarusQLong share a report from CNN: The third attempt was the charm for Boeing's Starliner mission after launching its first crewed flight test Wednesday in a milestone that has been a decade in the making. The new spacecraft's maiden voyage with humans on board lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are riding aboard the Starliner capsule on a journey that takes them to the International Space Station. The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test, is the culmination of Boeing's efforts to develop a spacecraft to rival SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule and expand the United States' options for ferrying astronauts to the space station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The federal agency's initiative aims to foster collaboration with private industry partners.

The flight marks only the sixth inaugural journey of a crewed spacecraft in US history, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted in a May news conference. "It started with Mercury, then with Gemini, then with Apollo, the space shuttle, then (SpaceX's) Dragon -- and now Starliner," Nelson said. Williams also made history as the first woman to fly aboard such a mission. NASA has a live recording of the launch on YouTube.