alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: [I]n a new study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center in the U.S. have revealed that we can put certain tasks on autopilot in a way that enables something closer to true multitasking. Driving is the perfect example: When you take your test, your entire mental and physical energy is concentrated on executing the right combinations of movements and thoughts. After a decade behind the wheel, the brain is no longer consciously thinking everything through in great detail.

In the new study, the researchers found that after extensive practice, the brain can effectively reroute some tasks around the brain's main computing center -- like a bypass road around a city -- to reduce mental overload and improve multitasking capability. "We have another stepping stone in our understanding of how the brain learns," says neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber, senior author of the study. "The encouraging part is that you really can learn to multitask. There is actually a way to remodel your brain architecture and use other parts of your brain."

[...] "Previous studies have shown that parts of the temporal cortex can be activated by particular object categories in experienced observers -- birds, cars, even Pokemon -- but a limitation of all of those studies is that they only looked after people became experts," says psychologist Patrick Cox, first author of the study. "We measure before and after training, so we can see that extensive training essentially put a category-selective area in the temporal lobe that was not there before." The study culminated in a dual-task experiment, in which the participants were asked to identify cars and take on another challenge. The individuals whose brains had offloaded more car-sorting work to the temporal cortex did better at the second task.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Trump administration has banned newly authorized foreign-made humanoid and four-legged robots, along with power inverters, citing "unacceptable risks" to the country's national security. FCC chairman Brendan Carr said the agency was doing its part "to secure America's critical supply chains." The BBC reports: The FCC has added the items to its Covered List -- a register of goods and services that are deemed a risk to US national security. The ban applies to new foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters and does not prevent the sale or import of any existing models that had been previously authorized by the FCC.

The FCC cited concerns that the use of foreign-made inverters could allow overseas firms to turn them off, steal data, facilitate remote access and surveillance by "foreign government actors, or be otherwise exploited through a cyberattack." It added that the use of robots made outside the US could allow "malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jspeter9191 has added a photo to the pool:

Today(29/07/26) evening at Tallawong, Sydney, Australia.
Jesus loves you.

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Dead tree against the winter sky, Ellis Brook Valley WA

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Old Barrington Quarry, WA

Nouja luchtig. Deze woensdag moet u het hebben van uw survival skills (of u gaat naar het strand). Het wordt namelijk warm, ten dele heet en op sommige plekken zelfs bloedje broeierig (Co de Geel) in Nederland. Om de tropische HITTE DES DOODS met temperaturen van 30 graden of erger te overleven doet u vandaag niet wat uw baas vraagt, niet wat uw man vraagt, niet wat uw vrouw vraagt, niet wat uw kinderen of ouders vragen, maar doet u lekker wat u van uzelf vraagt. Een glaasje koel water pakken ter hydratatie, de ventilator op standje woei als u een briesje blieft, het zonnescherm uit bij een ingeving van algehele verstandigheid en misschien wel naar buurtzwembad of recreatieplas als er geen jongeren zijn. En tégen de hittestress en vóór de hitte-ongelijkheid zet u uiteraard dé hittedodenvoorkomer (airco) aan. Want een koel huis is een koel hoofd is een koel hart is een koel dagje in een koel leven.

Extra koeltewensen voor Limburg, Noord-Brabant, Gelderland en Overijssel

Er zijn nog plekken!

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Goedemorgen lieve Nederlanders, allemaal lekker geslapen? "De afgelopen nacht zijn er in Nederland drie invallen geweest vanwege een terrorismeonderzoek, zo bevestigt een woordvoerster van het Landelijk Parket. Naast invallen in Rotterdam en Eindhoven werd stond ook de DSI voor de deur van een woning in de gemeente Alkmaar." Het gaat om twee minderjarigen en een man van 19. De inval in Eindhoven was in een woning waar een 19-jarige man woont die in 2023 al werd opgepakt omdat hij aanhanger is van IS. Het zullen dus wel weer nihilisten zijn! Meer beelden van de inval in Rotterdam hierrr.

OPINION A week after becoming the UK's seventh Prime Minister in ten years, Andy Burnham has made some good headlines, but, among the promises to cap bus fares and end rough sleeping, something was missing. The post of a dedicated technology minister is gone. The last serving secretary of state, Liz Kendall, was sacked when Burnham decided the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) should be broken up and its responsibilities divided among the Cabinet Office, the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). A new AI minister role was created and filled by Kanishka Narayan to work jointly with the Cabinet Office and BIST. He will attend Cabinet. It is just the latest merry-go-round for the people charged with using technology to improve the way government works and helping to modernize the public sector's ailing legacy systems. The Government Digital Service was created by David Cameron's Conservative government in 2011 and sat in the Cabinet Office until 2024, when Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer moved it to DSIT. Now it has its third home in little more than two years with the move to DCMS. With it will travel the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence, which the Starmer government designed to help public sector organizations stand up to global tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and the big four consultancies. As well as saving money, it is also supposed to open opportunities for smaller UK startups in public sector contracts in a bid to boost economic growth. Taking soundings last week, Burnham's decision to tinker with the machinery of government – as Whitehall mandarins like to call it – risks creating an incoherent approach to tech management, procurement, and policy. Ian Murray is the only "digital" minister in DCMS, and he does not have a Cabinet position. Government tech is squeezed into his brief between societal problems such as digital inclusion and online harms. That isn't to argue such things are trivial – they're not – but they are very different to making government tech work. And they are likely to be far more emotive and noisier in terms of media attention. Any changes Murray tries to drive through will have to contend with Dame Antonia Romeo, who was appointed as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service on February 19. Some people with a close knowledge of Whitehall are not rating his chances. Does it matter? We can only judge by what the government sets out to do. It was only in January that Murray promised Parliament he would "strengthen and extend our digital and data public infrastructure." He said the government would get a view of its digital estate and remove legacy technology, providing common platforms and shared direction. Easier said than done. At the same time, the Roadmap for Modern Digital Government said it would transform how "the whole of the public sector" uses technology to help citizens. In that plan, it also said there would be a role for UK tech companies through a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence that would "get the best from our suppliers and create opportunities for the UK tech sector." The Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence has now moved with GDS from DSIT to DCMS. All this came after the government promised it could find £45 billion in internal efficiency savings through automation and AI, a claim met with skepticism by experts and described as a distraction by MPs. So a lot is at stake if Burnham's changes fail to achieve anything like the things his predecessor promised. But the promises themselves bely a deeper problem. In April 2024, The Register reported on documents from the Cabinet Office's Central Digital & Data Office, which said the government's commercial dealings with the dominant cloud vendors risked "concentration and vendor lock-in that inhibit the UK government's negotiating power." It's hardly a starting position of strength. And adding to that confused messaging, former tech minister Kendall later promised more whole-government deals with industry giants following its £9 billion agreement with Microsoft, seeking to target other cloud service providers. If the tail has been wagging the dog, who's going to stop it? The people who were perhaps in that position have moved departments again and lack Cabinet representation. Meanwhile, The Register has recorded for years that government frequently awards billions in IT contracts to incumbent tech giants, seemingly through lack of investment in commensurate internal technical and commercial skills. In just one example, we reported in January 2025 that the UK tax collector had awarded £3.8 billion to three incumbent tech suppliers – including £591 million without any outside competition – which were part of a £10 billion deal from 2004 that was only supposed to last ten years. Any effort to tackle that problem will now come from within DCMS, and compete for ministerial attention with, for example, decisions about the BBC or the Premier League. Meanwhile, Narayan is set to lead an AI Taskforce housed in the new Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to "drive the Government's overall strategy on AI and unlock the opportunities it holds for growth, prosperity and public sector transformation." The taskforce will also report to Romeo and "deliver the Prime Minister's AI agenda." Murray may be lucky to get a look-in. Maybe Narayan will find a way of standing up to big tech firms while also getting them to invest in the UK. But the temptation will always be there to get a quick publicity hit, as former technology minister Peter Kyle did with an agreement with Google last year, which aimed "to upskill up to 100,000 civil servants in the latest tech by 2030." It turned out the agreement had no contractual teeth. With AI strategy right at the center of government and efforts to better manage suppliers at arm's length, tech companies are likely to see a big opportunity. Some good news has come out of Burnham's arrival in 10 Downing Street. At least he canceled plans for a national digital ID scheme, an uncosted solution looking for a problem. But something is missing at the heart of the changes. Responsibility for getting to grips with legacy systems, public sector data, and commercial relationships with tech giants now sits apart from the mission to use AI to improve prosperity and transform the public sector. Unless the government addresses that schism, Burnham's decision to throw a spanner in the machinery of government could come back to haunt him. ®

De verdachten zijn tussen de 16 en 19 jaar oud, twee van hen zijn minderjarig. Volgens het Eindhovens Dagblad werd één van hen eerder verdacht van het voorbereiden van een terroristische aanslag.

​John neemt dit jaar zijn e-reader mee op vakantie. “Dat scheelt gewicht”, zegt hij. “Zo kan ik een heleboel boeken meenemen om niet aan toe te komen.”

“Vorig jaar had ik een heel dik boek in mijn koffer”, zegt John. “Met een harde kaft. Dat was gewoon best wel zwaar, en ik heb geen pagina gelezen. Nu heb ik datzelfde boek op mijn e-reader gedownload plus nog allemaal andere.”

Trots laat John zijn e-reader zien. “Kijk, het nieuwste boek van Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer. Dat leek me echt wat voor deze zomer.” Ook toont hij ‘Jij bent het licht’ van Marion Pauw, ‘Het droompad’ van Twan Huys en een paar Engelse titels. “Ik kan wel tien boeken niet lezen in één vakantie.”

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