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Microsoft has commemorated its recently-departed Xbox Live Gold subscription service with a shiny new badge on users' Xbox profile screens.

The award - which is of course coloured gold - is designed to reward previous members of the service.

"Xbox Live Gold 2002 - 2023", the award states, referring to the 21 years since Microsoft first launched Xbox Live for the original Xbox.

As part of this morning's Xbox Digital Broadcast at Tokyo Game Show, we got our first look at Hotel Barcelona.

This upcoming release is a time-looping action game from Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro and Goichi "Suda51" Suda, two legends of game development. It promises to serve us all up some "2.5D slasher film parodic action".

So, what's it actually all about? Well, Hotel Barcelona is where America's serial killers have all decided to reconvene. And, according to the official trailer blurb, players will need to defeat this murderous bunch and "check out before all the blood is spilled".

Monster Hunter Now, the latest free-to-play Pokémon Go-style augmented reality creature-battler from developer Niantic, made in collaboration with Capcom, has officially surpassed 5m downloads in its first week of release on iOS and Android.

Monster Hunter Now, which was announced back in February and got its full launch on 21st September following a series of closed beta tests, employs a similar real-world exploration and interaction system to the ones seen in the likes of Niantic's Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom, albeit with an obvious Monster Hunter twist.

Here, players are able to gather useful resources and fight monsters they encounter while out on their real-world travels - including the Barroth, Tobi Kadachi, Jyuratodus, Paolumu, Anjanath, Rathian, Rathalos, and Diablos - then combine their spoils to create better equipment that'll enable them to take on tougher challenges.

At this year's Tokyo Game Show, Capcom announced Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy will release on 25th January, 2024.

The collection, which includes Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, was first announced in June with a release window of early 2024.

The trilogy will include new bonus features as well as all DLC released for the original games. This includes alternative costumes (sweater Feenie makes a return!), unlockable artwork, and the episodes Turnabout Reclaimed from Dual Destinies and Turnabout Time Traveler from Spirit of Justice, which were previously available only as DLC.

Capcom has shared more details on Exoprimal's second season, or as it's calling it, Title Update 2.

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As part of the studio's Tokyo Game Show presentation, Capcom revealedthe second season of its mech-tastic dino shooter will be going live on 18th October. Players can expect a variety of additions on this date, including a new map known as Ocean Platform.

This offshore oil plant has been converted into a Hi-Xol synthesis facility, with Capcom says will boast "precarious pathways" and a lot of "verticality" for players to negotiate.

Yolanda Fraser is back near a ragged chain-link fence, blinking through tears as she tidies up flowers and ribbons and a pinwheel twirls in the breeze at a makeshift roadside memorial in a small Montana town.

This is where the badly decomposed body of her granddaughter Kaysera Stops Pretty Places was found a few days after the 18-year-old went missing from a Native American reservation border town.

Four years later, there are still no answers about how the Native American teenager was killed. No named suspects. No arrests.

Fraser’s grief is a common tale among Native Americans whose loved ones went missing, and she’s turned her fight for justice into a leading role with other families working to highlight missing and slain Indigenous peoples’ cases across the U.S. Despite some early success from a new U.S. government program aimed at the problem, most cases remain unsolved and federal officials have closed more than 300 potential cases due to jurisdictional conflicts and other issues.

• At least 7,178,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled as of September 20, 2023, based on the most current data from 48 states and the District of Columbia

• There is wide variation in disenrollment rates across reporting states, ranging from 69% in Texas to 14% in Maine and Oregon.

In his first interview since he was acquitted over the weekend in a historic impeachment trial, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) lashed out at the Biden administration and the Lone Star State’s House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) over his impeachment and trial.
“So you think that the effort to remove you from office really came from the Biden administration?” commentator Tucker Carlson asked Paxton in the interview, posted to the platform X.
“I really do,” Paxton said, adding that he thinks “that’s where it was instigated.”
The attorney general alleged that the impeachment was a way to get him “out of the way” after he filed lawsuits against the administration.
Paxton, who had been suspended from his post since the Texas House voted to impeach him earlier this year, was acquitted by a jury of state senators over the weekend on all 16 articles of impeachment he faced.

Here's one major change coming down the road: Long-term support (LTS) for Linux kernels is being reduced from six to two years.

Currently, there are six LTS Linux kernels -- 6.1, 5.15, 5.10, 5.4, 4.19, and 4.14. Under the process to date, 4.14 would roll off in January 2024, and another kernel would be added. Going forward, though, when the 4.14 kernel and the next two drop off, they won't be replaced.

Why? Simple, Corbet explained: "There's really no point to maintaining it for that long because people are not using them." I agree. While I'm sure someone out there is still running 4.14 in a production Linux system, there can't be many of them.

Another reason, and a far bigger problem than simply maintaining LTS, according to Corbet, is that Linux code maintainers are burning out. It's not that developers are a problem. The last few Linux releases have involved an average of more than 2,000 programmers -- including about 200 new developers coming on board -- working on each release. However, the maintainers -- the people who check the code to see if it fits and works properly -- are another matter.

Ohio’s Supreme Court late Tuesday ruled that much of the GOP-controlled state ballot board’s language to describe a November question about abortion is accurate, dealing a blow to the abortion rights groups that challenged the board’s description.

The sharply divided court said only one element of the description is misleading and must be rewritten. The justices ruled that all other elements that were challenged, including the substitution of “unborn child” for “fetus,” can remain.

In November, Ohioans will vote on a citizen-initiated amendment that would create a constitutional right to reproductive freedom in the state, which would protect decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing a pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion up to the point of fetal viability.

The Ohio Ballot Board is tasked with writing the actual words of statewide ballot measures. The wording is supposed to be fair and nonpartisan, without attempts to mislead or deceive voters.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, the coalition supporting the amendment, sued the board after it adopted wording drafted by the Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose that the coalition said was “a naked attempt to prejudice voters against the Amendment.”

LaRose, who is running in the GOP primary to challenge Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) next year, has publicly opposed the amendment.

But the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the phrase “unborn child” solicits the board’s “ethical judgment or personal view.”

The FTC said Epic Games duped players with "deceptive interfaces" that could trigger purchases while the game loaded, and accused it of having default settings that breached people's privacy.

In total, it agreed to a settlement of $520m with Epic Games over the concerns.

This includes a $275m fine relating to how Fortnite collects data on its users, including those aged under 13, without informing parents.

It is the largest fine ever levied by the FTC for breaking a rule.

The rest of the settlement will be paid out as refunds.