Peter Faber had van jongs af aan meegekregen dat zijn toekomst weinig positiefs zou brengen. Maar met zijn dwarse levenshouding en vrijgevochten speelstijl bouwde hij een imposante carrière als acteur op.
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MOSKOU (ANP/AFP/RTR) - Oekraïne heeft een droneaanval uitgevoerd op een distributiecentrum van de Russische webwinkel Wildberries. Dat gebeurde in de stad Jekaterinenburg, ruim 2000 kilometer van de grens met Oekraïne.
Volgens Wildberries ontstond er brand en konden alle medewerkers in veiligheid worden gebracht. De gouverneur van de regio zegt dat drie drones op het dak van de logistieke hub terechtkwamen.
Oekraïne heeft sinds half juli ongeveer twintig locaties van Wildberries aangevallen. Complete panden met goederen zijn verwoest en het uitgebreide bezorg- en distributienetwerk is verstoord. Wildberries is de grootste webwinkel van Rusland en wordt vaak de Russische versie van Amazon genoemd.
Kyiv stelt dat Wildberries bijdraagt aan de oorlog tegen Oekraïne. In het brede winkelaanbod komen spullen voor die militairen kunnen gebruiken, bijvoorbeeld nachtkijkers en helmen. Wildberries en het Kremlin ontkennen dat het bedrijf de Russische krijgsmacht bevoorraadt.
Acteur en zanger Barrie Stevens leerde van Peter Faber dat je "altijd open moet blijven staan om nieuwe dingen te leren en inzichten te krijgen". Dat zegt de entertainer vrijdag in reactie op het overlijden van Faber. De twee waren samen tussen 2018 en 2020 te zien in de RTL4-realityserie Beter laat dan nooit, samen met Gerard Cox en Willibrord Frequin.
Van de vier leeft alleen Stevens nog. "Ze hebben mij in dat programma geleerd om het leven nóg meer te omarmen. Om die reden is die tijd voor mij ontzettend belangrijk geweest", zegt hij.
Stevens zegt dat Faber "enorm waarde hechtte aan zijn levensvreugde". "Hij liet dat dan merken door bijvoorbeeld opeens hele gekke kreten te slaken. Hij had iets heel clownesks, iets heel ondeugends."
Filmproducent Haig Balian, die met Faber de films Schatjes! en Mama is boos! maakte, noemt Faber "een geweldige man die als acteur alles kon, zowel op film als op toneel". Maar naast zijn acteerkwaliteiten herinnert Balian zich ook hoe aardig Faber altijd was: "Het was een heel vriendelijk, aimabel mens. Als je hem tegenkwam, bleef je altijd weer kletsen."
UTRECHT (ANP) - ASN Bank heeft in de eerste zes maanden ruim een kwart meer winst geboekt. Het financiële concern zag de personeelskosten dalen door een grote reorganisatie waarbij vele honderden banen verdwijnen. Verder werden de resultaten positief beïnvloed door incidentele posten.
De nettowinst steeg in de eerste helft van het jaar met 26 procent naar 174 miljoen euro. De resultaten van de grote transformatie van de bank waarmee ASN Bank eind 2024 startte, zijn inmiddels zichtbaar in de operationele lasten, stelt topman Roland Boekhout in een toelichting op de halfjaarcijfers. De lasten, gecorrigeerd voor incidentele posten, daalden met 6 procent, mede dankzij de personeelskosten die 15 procent lager uitvielen.
De voormalige Volksbank gaat sinds ruim een jaar verder onder de naam ASN Bank. Dochtermerken SNS en RegioBank zijn geschrapt. Als onderdeel van de grote veranderingen binnen de bank werd ook een grote reorganisatie aangekondigd, waarbij in totaal 1600 banen moeten komen te vervallen.
Oekraïne treft distributiecentrum webwinkel Wildberries op ruim 2.000 kilometer van Oekraïense grens
Wie plannen heeft om dit weekend op pad te gaan, krijgt van het weer weinig redenen om thuis te blijven. Onze regio staat opnieuw een zonnig en warm zomerweekend te wachten. Zondag kan het zelfs ruim 30 graden worden. Van benauwdheid hebben we daarbij weinig last, want de lucht blijft voorlopig droog.
Europe continues to struggle with the effects of extreme hot weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent
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ON CALL Welcome to another edition of On Call, the reader-contributed column The Register runs each Friday to share your tech support stories. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Darwin," who once worked as a sysadmin for a Wall Street law firm – the sort of outfit that charges four-figure hourly fees and justifies them by pointing to its exceptionally smart and experienced staff. Darwin was busy updating a PC when one of the lawyer's secretaries called. "The lawyer needed help with Outlook," Darwin told On Call. He assumed an email problem could wait until he had finished the PC upgrade, so promised to be there in ten minutes. "The secretary called back and told me the lawyer insisted I come immediately." Darwin therefore hustled off to the lawyer’s office and asked him to describe the problem. "All of these letters are slanted," the legal genius explained. "That's called italics," Darwin replied, then watched as the lawyer got angry and demanded to know how italics happened. Darwin found the reaction rather odd. The lawyer had attended an Ivy League university and held both law and business degrees – credentials that suggested a certain intelligence and worldliness. "I showed him the italics icon," Darwin told On Call, "and after I left his office I saw his secretary bent over trying to hide her laughter." Who's the supposedly smartest person who has asked you a dumb support question? Click here to send On Call an email telling your tale, and hopefully we'll be smart enough to share it with our readers on a future Friday. ®
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to natural bacteriophages.
Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used genome language models, the genetic equivalent of the large language models behind AI chatbots, to design functioning genomes for bacteriophages. The viruses were then made in the laboratory and pitted against E coli in a dish. The ability to "rapidly design" genomes and tune them for specific bugs while overcoming resistance could "transform phage therapy" and "expand biotechnological toolkits," the researchers wrote in the journal Science.
But beyond the potential benefits, the scientists said the work raised "important biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity considerations" and urged others who were designing whole genomes to "consult both safety and security professionals throughout the project." In an accompanying article, Prof Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reinforced the warning, writing: "Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not." Tom Ellis, a professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, said the work was impressive, but revealed how hard it would be to make more complex genomes. "This is literally the smallest and easiest genome to make," he said. An AI trained on the genetic code of dangerous bugs could be used to design more harmful viruses, Ellis said, but controlling access to genetic data and having restrictions on making genomes that look dangerous would help. "Governments are working hard to do this already," he added. "But honestly," he said, "the threat from full AI design and writing of a genome of a virus or bacteria is very overblown when we consider that just taking existing pathogens and making gain-of-function changes to their genomes is so much easier and much more likely to be a real pathogenic threat."
Dr Filippa Lentzos, a reader in science and international security at King's College London, said the most important point to intervene at the moment was when DNA was being manufactured. "It's important to see the bigger governance picture and not focus regulation solely on the AI model," she said. "A layered approach makes more sense: safeguards around model development and access, responsible research review, synthesis screening, and established laboratory biosafety and biosecurity."
Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used genome language models, the genetic equivalent of the large language models behind AI chatbots, to design functioning genomes for bacteriophages. The viruses were then made in the laboratory and pitted against E coli in a dish. The ability to "rapidly design" genomes and tune them for specific bugs while overcoming resistance could "transform phage therapy" and "expand biotechnological toolkits," the researchers wrote in the journal Science.
But beyond the potential benefits, the scientists said the work raised "important biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity considerations" and urged others who were designing whole genomes to "consult both safety and security professionals throughout the project." In an accompanying article, Prof Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reinforced the warning, writing: "Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not." Tom Ellis, a professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, said the work was impressive, but revealed how hard it would be to make more complex genomes. "This is literally the smallest and easiest genome to make," he said. An AI trained on the genetic code of dangerous bugs could be used to design more harmful viruses, Ellis said, but controlling access to genetic data and having restrictions on making genomes that look dangerous would help. "Governments are working hard to do this already," he added. "But honestly," he said, "the threat from full AI design and writing of a genome of a virus or bacteria is very overblown when we consider that just taking existing pathogens and making gain-of-function changes to their genomes is so much easier and much more likely to be a real pathogenic threat."
Dr Filippa Lentzos, a reader in science and international security at King's College London, said the most important point to intervene at the moment was when DNA was being manufactured. "It's important to see the bigger governance picture and not focus regulation solely on the AI model," she said. "A layered approach makes more sense: safeguards around model development and access, responsible research review, synthesis screening, and established laboratory biosafety and biosecurity."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.