Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

"It is out of the question to let a boss run rampant" - Ubisoft workers strike against "disastrous" cutbacks - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-22T11:13:12.000Z

Ubisoft’s bloodbath of game cancellations and restructuring yesterday has attracted the expected fiery response from unionised workers, with the French game industry union Solidaires Informatique calling a half-day strike today. Cost-cutting and potential layoffs aside, the strikers are protesting against Ubisoft’s decision to mandate a full return to office, with workers given an annual allowance of work from home days instead - something a publisher executive has justified as a move “to enhance collective efficiency” and “the sense of belonging”.

Nexus Mods' latest modathon isn't a typical modathon, it's a first go at the same for multi-mod collections - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-22T10:28:01.000Z

With their latest Fallout modathon having wrapped up at the close of last year, mod-hosting site Nexus Mods have decided to try something new with their latest event designed to supercharge mod creation around a specific game or theme. Rather than asking folks to submit fresh individual mods like usual, the modathon that's about to kick off is all about putting together chunky multi-mod lists which can overhaul a game in one fell swoop.

These user-assembled modlists, dubbed Collections, are a feature Nexus Mods have been pushing for a number of years now, so it's not surprising they're now serving as the subject of a modathon for the first time.

[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for January 22, 2026 - LWN.net

2026-01-22T00:47:48.000Z

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

Front: Singularity; fsconfig(); io_uring restrictions; GPG vulnerabilities; slab allocator; AshOS.
Briefs: Pixel exploit; telnetd exploit; OzLabs; korgalore; Firefox Nightly RPMs; Forgejo 14.0; Pandas 3.0; Wine 11.0; Quotes; ...
Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Rule your own, slightly socially awkward knights in the round table management RPG Sovereign Tower - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T22:56:00.000Z

You ever accidentally find out that you're the sovereign of an entire nation as dictated by a prophecy even though you're technically just random nobody, and so you wind-up being the one to have to make all the decisions about how your nation is run? No? Well, that's fine, but if you'd like that to be you, I'll introduce you to Sovereign Tower, a management RPG where you send off your knights of the round table to deal with all manner of quests.

Firestarters promises to mix Rollerdome, arena shooters and visual novels into a government-sanctioned bloodsport - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T21:42:39.000Z

This is probably the umpteenth time I've said I'm not someone who plays many shooters, but here I am saying it again, because an FPS has rocked up that has clocked my interest. It's called Firestarters, an arena shooter that's a bit like Quake, a bit like Rollerdome, and looks like good, bloody fun.

Goofy name aside, action roguelite Lort looks like a neat fantasy alternative to Risk of Rain 2 - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T18:56:14.000Z

I am going to level with you. My awareness of Lort up until this point has been non-existent. Never heard of it before today, it's early access release day! But when you see a game called Lort, well, you at least need to take a little look. And as astronomically silly as the name is, it looks like a pretty neat, silly time, so, my predilection towards the inane has clearly worked out in my favour this time.

[$] Cleanup on aisle fsconfig() - LWN.net

2026-01-21T18:34:14.000Z

As part of the process of writing man pages for the "new" mount API, which has been available in the kernel since 2019, Aleksa Sarai encountered a number of places where the fsconfig() system call—for configuring filesystems before mounting—needs to be cleaned up. In the 2025 Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) session that he led, Sarai wanted to discuss some of the problems he found, including at least one with security implications. The idea of the session was for him to describe the various bugs and ambiguities that he had found, but he also wanted attendees to raise other problems they had with the system call.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake and more cancelled by Ubisoft, with layoffs potentially on the horizon - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T18:03:27.000Z

Given its lengthy, troubled development period, it will probably not come as any surprise to you that Ubisoft have announced today that their Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake has been cancelled. This comes as part of a broader restructure at the company, which will apparently focus on what they call five "specialised creative houses" to "reclaim creative leadership and restore sustainable growth."

Pandas 3.0 released - LWN.net

2026-01-21T17:37:05.000Z

Version 3.0.0 of the pandas data analysis and manipulation library for Python has been released. Notable changes include a dedicated string type (str), new "copy-on-write" behavior, and much more. This release also removes a number of features that were deprecated in prior versions of pandas; developers are advised to upgrade to pandas 2.3 and ensure code is working without warnings before moving to 3.0. See the release notes for the full changelog.

As it approaches its second early access anniversary, Enshrouded gets a 1.0 release window for later this year - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T17:09:42.000Z

More and more as time goes on I feel that if I blink a whole two years will pass, and suddenly a game like Enshrouded, which is coming up to its second early access anniversary, will be gearing up for its proper 1.0 launch. While an exact date for the survival game's full release hasn't been locked in just yet, a new Road to Release video was shared by developer Keen Games detailing what you can expect leading up to said launch.

"They'll figure out how to get out of there eventually" – Arc Raider's latest enemy won't stick to Stella Montis - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T17:06:01.000Z

As someone of a nervous disposition, I am not a fan of the Shredder, one of the latest enemies added to Arc Raiders. First appearing after November's North Line update, these floating bollards buzz about the halls and corridors of the mountainside facility, Stella Montis. Cross their path and they emit a mechanical shriek before releasing an explosive wave of shrapnel. Anyone caught in the blast is cut to shribbons.

Currently, like a Dalek left at the top of a staircase, Shredders haven't found a way down the mountain and out into the world. So, if I want to avoid being screamed at and eviscerated by a hovering cigar tube, I can just avoid the hilltop base. According to Arc Raiders' design lead, that relative safety may not last much longer.

Cyberpunk 2077 VR modder doesn't rule out releasing it for free after DMCA, claims there was "no negotiation" with CD Projekt - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T16:48:35.000Z

Following a mod which provides VR support for Cyberpunk 2077 was hit with a takedown request by CD Projekt, its creator has now said that they've not ruled out the possibility of releasing it for free. However, they've painted that as an unlikely road to go down, arguing that it's "kind of become a moot point" due to piracy of their work following the strike.

The fact Luke Ross' R.E.A.L VR mod for Cyberpunk, which is one arm of a wider VR support framework for a wide range of games, was behind a paywall appeared to be the crux of CD Projekt's decision to strike it. The studio's business development vice president Jan Rosner claimed in a post that they offered Ross the option of making it free and switching the paywall for optional donations, in line with their guidelines for fan-made content.

[$] Responses to gpg.fail - LWN.net

2026-01-21T16:05:28.000Z

At the 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3) in December, researchers Lexi Groves ("49016") and Liam Wachter said that they had discovered a number of flaws in popular implementations of OpenPGP email-encryption standard. They also released an accompanying web site, gpg.fail, with descriptions of the discoveries. Most of those presented were found in GNU Privacy Guard (GPG), though the pair also discussed problems in age, Minisign, Sequoia, and the OpenPGP standard (RFC 9580) itself. The discoveries have spurred some interesting discussions and as well as responses from GPG and Sequoia developers.

Saving The Elfeed Database - Irreal

2026-01-21T15:52:31.000Z

I’ve written before that one of things I love about Elfeed is that it keeps a database of all your feed entries. That makes it easy to find earlier content if you need to revisit or reference it for some reason. It has an excellent search capability that makes this mostly painless.

Punchagan over at NOETIC NOUGHT has a sobering tale about losing his Elfeed database. He thinks it probably happened during a system crash that occurred at the same time his Elfeed database was being saved. Depending on how you use your feed, that may be more or less disastrous.

If you depend on your feed for research, the loss would be serious. Punchagan uses his Elfeed all the time so he decided to automate the backing up of Elfeed’s database. He shows the code in his post so you can take a look. It’s pretty straightforward. Whenever a tag changes or a new entry is added, he schedules a database save and backup to Git.

If you’re an ordinary user, you may not need such immediate backups. You could for example, schedule a backup once or twice a day so even if you lost the active database the loss would be minimal. On the other hand, if you really depend on your feed, Punchagan’s solution may be just what you need.

Narrative-heavy horror platformer LOVE ETERNAL looks fantastic and arrives February 19 - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-21T15:47:39.000Z

Run, jump and flip gravity in the narrative-heavy horror platformer LOVE ETERNAL when it releases February 19th. The atmosphere in this looks simply awesome.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Security updates for Wednesday - LWN.net

2026-01-21T15:42:30.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (brotli and container-tools:rhel8), Debian (python-keystonemiddleware and python3.9), Fedora (cef, freerdp, golang-github-tetratelabs-wazero, and libpcap), Oracle (brotli, gpsd, kernel, and transfig), Red Hat (freerdp, golang, java-11-openjdk with Extended Lifecycle Support, libpng, libssh, mingw-libpng, and runc), SUSE (abseil-cpp, alloy, apache2, bind, cpp-httplib, curl, erlang, firefox, gpg2, grafana, haproxy, hauler, hawk2, libblkid-devel, libpng16, libraylib550, python-keystonemiddleware-doc, python-uv, python-weasyprint, squid, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (crawl and iperf3).

Pirates director Gore Verbinski is iffy on Unreal Engine in movies: "I think it doesn’t work from a strictly photo-real standpoint" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T15:21:37.000Z

We interrupt our regular schedule of weaponising hamsters and grizzling about GTA 6 with a word from the world of film – a film being a curious subspecies of video game that plays itself, consists partly of human souls preserved in gelatin and silver halide, and can only be ‘failed’ by skipping the post-credits scene. Whatever will the mad labcoats dream up next?

More specifically, it’s time for an insight from Gore Verbinski, director of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. He thinks the much-gobflapped adoption of Epic’s Unreal Engine by visual effect teams is a blight upon the face of Hollywood. He thinks it’s an insult to the dignity of helicopters. OK, he doesn’t go quite that hard.

Anthem private server experimentation's underway, as the shooter's subreddit mods rethink retirement plans - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T14:54:31.000Z

Last week, EA followed through on plans outlined in 2025 by shutting down the servers of Bioware's Anthem. Pretty much since the shooter's fate was set in stone, there's been the natural chatter about whether it could potentially be kept online or revived down the road in some fashion. At this early stage, there's been no huge re-emergence, but that doesn't mean folks aren't experimenting to see what such a thing might involve.

80s-themed survival horror I Hate This Place is a gentler Darkwood based on a celebrated comic series - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-21T14:32:02.000Z

If you find Darkwood too dark, perhaps you will like I Hate This Place, an isometric (is it, tho?) survival horror based on the comic book of the same name from Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin. I Hate This Place is dark – it has hungry tentacle nests, antlered stalkers, and spiders of many sizes – but going by the trailer, at least, it’s nothing like as harrowing and hollowing as the Acid Wizard game. The colours are bright and splashy, the munsters, funky: think Stranger Things.

It occurs to me that we need a thematic darkness scale for ‘dark’ video games, perhaps comparable to ocean depth categorisation. I’d say Darkwood is right down there in the hadopelagic trenches. I Hate This Place? A denizen of the upper bathypelagic (Midnight) zone, so far. Here's that trailer.

Hungry Horrors is a unique deck-builder about feeding monsters out now - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-21T13:00:53.000Z

Gather ingredients, make dishes and feed all the strange creatures in a deck-builder that manages to set itself apart from the others in Hungry Horrors.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.