The beloved Essex nightclub that stood empty and untouched for over 25 years
Raquels nightclub in Basildon was the place to be in the 1970s and 1980s, but it has been left abandoned for more than two decades - and the interior is largely untouched
Scientists Say 'Dueling Dinosaurs' Fossil Confirms a Smaller Tyrannosaur Species, Not a Teenaged T. Rex
An anonymous reader shared this report from NPR:
It's known as the "Dueling Dinosaurs" fossil: A triceratops and a tyrannosaur, skeletons entangled, locked in apparent combat right up until the moment of their mutual demise... That discovery in 2006 now appears to have overturned decades of dinosaur dogma about Tyrannosaurus rex, the fearsome giant long thought to be the sole top predator stalking the late Cretaceous. In a paper in the journal Nature, paleontologists Lindsay Zanno and James Napoli conclude that some of the bones from that specimen belong not to a teenage T. rex, but to a fully grown individual of a different tyrannosaur species — Nanotyrannus lancensis....
One of the first of those red flags in the new specimen was the arm bones. They looked completely different than T. rex's puny appendages... "These are powerful arms with large claws, large hands. They were using them for prey capture." Contrast that with T. rex, "an animal that's a mouth on legs." There were additional clues. The animal had fewer tail vertebrae and more teeth than T. rex. Zanno and Napoli considered other lines of evidence. They created 3D models of numerous purported T. rexes against which they compared their specimen. They looked at the growth stages of the cranial nerves and sinuses of close living relatives of dinosaurs, features that were visible in the fossilized skeleton.
"But maybe the most important and damning thing that we did was we were able to figure out that our animal is not a juvenile at all," she says. This conclusion was based on slicing through the fossil's limb bones to examine the growth rings. That work demonstrated that this animal was mature and done growing when it died around the age of 20. "That means it's half the size and a tenth of the mass of a full grown Tyrannosaurus rex," says Zanno... In addition, while making models of all those other alleged T. rex skeletons, Zanno says they identified another new species of tyrannosaur, one they're calling Nanotyrannus lethaeus...
"It tells us that these end-Cretaceous ecosystems right before the asteroid hit were flourishing," says Zanno. "They had an abundance of different predators. And refutes this idea that dinosaurs were in decline before the asteroid struck."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amanda Owen left devastated as she announces heartbreaking family loss at Ravenseat Farm
The TV farmer, 51, took to social media to share the heartbreaking update with her loyal fan base this week.
The 'road to nowhere' that cuts through the Amazon jungle and is costing British taxpayers £52million
It is just one of hundreds of schemes funded through the ICF which will spend a staggering £11.6bn in foreign aid on behalf of the British taxpayer by the end of this financial year.
Psychic Sally Morgan reveals what to expect in the afterlife and how to protect yourself from malevolent spirits over Halloween
The celebrated medium, 74, has gone on to use her gift to bring comfort, answers and advice to millions through her TV shows, podcasts and theatre tours.
Shrubby heck! Bungalow swallowed by hedging is listed for auction for £110,000... (but wait until you see inside!)
A bungalow tucked away on the side of a Welsh road has become the subject of intense online speculation after a real estate agent listed the derelict property for auction.
Move over Halloween, Mariah is back! Queen of Christmas officially launches holiday season with iconic video as she continues annual tradition
The famous pop star, 56, who is also affectionately known as the 'Queen Of Christmas', continued her annual tradition with the new clip.
Ubuntu Will Use Rust For Dozens of Core Linux Utilities
Ubuntu "is adopting the memory-safe Rust language," reports ZDNet, citing remarks at this year's Ubuntu Summit from Jon Seager, Canonical's VP of engineering for Ubuntu:
. Seager said the engineering team is focused on replacing key system components with Rust-based alternatives to enhance safety and resilience, starting with Ubuntu 25.10. He stressed that resilience and memory safety, not just performance, are the principal drivers: "It's the enhanced resilience and safety that is more easily achieved with Rust ports that are most attractive to me". This move is echoed in Ubuntu's adoption of sudo-rs, the Rust implementation of sudo, with fallback and opt-out mechanisms for users who want to use the old-school sudo command.
In addition to sudo-rs, Ubuntu 26.04 will use the Rust-based uutils/coreutils for Linux's default core utilities. This setup includes ls, cp, mv, and dozens of other basic Unix command-line tools. This Rust reimplementation aims for functional parity with GNU coreutils, with improved safety and maintainability.
On the desktop front, Ubuntu 26.04 will also bring seamless TPM-backed full disk encryption. If this approach reminds you of Windows BitLocker or MacOS FileVault, it should. That's the idea.
In other news, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth said "I'm a believer in the potential of Linux to deliver a desktop that could have wider and universal appeal." (Although he also thinks "the open-source community needs to understand that building desktops for people who aren't engineers is different. We need to understand that the 'simple and just works' is also really important.")
Shuttleworth answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2005 and 2012.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I'm a pensions expert and I've just taken a lump sum before Reeves can raid it - here's everything you need to know about what happened (and why you have to act NOW if this is your plan)
With just weeks until the Budget, I have decided to take a tax-free lump sum from my pension.
'We'll be knocking on your door': Sadiq Khan's Ulez enforcers lift driver's BMW off driveway as they issue warning to motorists who dodge fines
Around 78,000 car owners are still refusing to pay ULEZ fines - the equivalent of three per cent of all cars in the zone.
My crippling anxiety was so bad I couldn't leave my bedroom. Here's exactly what I did to get it under control: NICOLA BONN
To the outside world, it looked like I had it all. But that wasn't the whole truth. I've struggled with anxiety, on and off, since I was little.
'The last couple of years have tested me in ways I never could have foreseen'. SAM RYDER reveals the dark truth about fame - and how he REALLY feels about Ed Sheeran
He went from recording TikToks in his shed to winning the nation's hearts at Eurovision. But his Christianity has helped him deal with knockbacks along the way
Judge gives 'family man' a second chance after he was exploited by drug dealers
Luke Freeland, 31, was arrested in August this year when he was seen selling cocaine in Springwood Drive where he immediately confessed.
Ministers were warned that jail which wrongly freed Ethiopian sex attack migrant had 'litany of issues and errors' over prisoner release
The error at HMP Chelmsford, in Essex, saw Hadush Kebatu freed when he should have been handed to immigration officers.
ALEXANDRA SHULMAN: At 67, tax-grabbing Labour is going to force me and my son out of our home of 20 years - and I won't be the only one
If Rachel Reeves and her cohort bring in their suggested mansion tax, I will have to move out of my home.
My girlfriend claimed our daughter was her lover's child and secretly ran away to Latvia... but now a DNA test proves I AM the father
A jilted man has finally won a battle to prove he is the biological father of his toddler daughter after his 'callous' former girlfriend fled to Latvia with their child and named another man as her father.
Shocking moment truck crashes after driving into police officer - before driver is taken out with Taser
In the footage, filmed from a nearby window, a pickup truck can be seen driving down a residential street in Lewisham - in southeast London - as police officers and a police van follow behind.
I worked with Laura Kuenssberg at the BBC - she showed her true colours at work drinks when the cameras stopped rolling
BBC's Laura Kuenssberg has been exposed by a colleague for showing her 'true colours' when the cameras are off.
Did a Weather Balloon, Not a Mysterious Space Object, Strike That United Airlines Flight?
Slashdot reader joshuark shares this report from SFGate:
The mystery object that struck a plane at 36,000 feet is likely not space debris, as some speculated, but rather a Silicon Valley test project gone wrong...
WindBorne Systems, a Palo Alto startup that uses atmospheric balloons to collect weather data for AI-based forecast models,has come forward to say that they believe they may be responsible for the object that hit the windshield... "At 6am PT, we sent our preliminary investigation to both NTSB and FAA, and are working with both of them to investigate further," [WindBorne's CEO John Dean posted on social media...]
WindBorne said the company has launched more than 4,000 balloons and that it coordinates with the Federal Aviation Administration for every launch.
WindBorne "has conducted more than 4,000 launches," the company said in a statement, noting that they've always coordinated those launched with America's Federal Aviation Administration and filed aviation alerts for every launched balloon. Plus "The system is designed to be safe in the event of a midair collision... Our balloon is 2.4 pounds at launch and gets lighter throughout flight."
We are working closely with the FAA on this matter. We immediately rolled out changes to minimize time spent between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. These changes are already live with immediate effect. Additionally, we are further accelerating our plans to use live flight data to autonomously avoid planes, even if the planes are at a non-standard altitude. We are also actively working on new hardware designs to further reduce impact force magnitude and concentration.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Did a Weather Balloon, Not a Mysteryious Space Object, Strike That United Airlines Flight?
Slashdot reader joshuark shares this report from SFGate:
The mystery object that struck a plane at 36,000 feet is likely not space debris, as some speculated, but rather a Silicon Valley test project gone wrong...
WindBorne Systems, a Palo Alto startup that uses atmospheric balloons to collect weather data for AI-based forecast models,has come forward to say that they believe they may be responsible for the object that hit the windshield... "At 6am PT, we sent our preliminary investigation to both NTSB and FAA, and are working with both of them to investigate further," [WindBorne's CEO John Dean posted on social media...]
WindBorne said the company has launched more than 4,000 balloons and that it coordinates with the Federal Aviation Administration for every launch.
WindBorne "has conducted more than 4,000 launches," the company said in a statement, noting that they've always coordinated those launched with America's Federal Aviation Administration and filed aviation alerts for every launched balloon. Plus "The system is designed to be safe in the event of a midair collision... Our balloon is 2.4 pounds at launch and gets lighter throughout flight."
We are working closely with the FAA on this matter. We immediately rolled out changes to minimize time spent between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. These changes are already live with immediate effect. Additionally, we are further accelerating our plans to use live flight data to autonomously avoid planes, even if the planes are at a non-standard altitude. We are also actively working on new hardware designs to further reduce impact force magnitude and concentration.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.