Bij het hagelschadecentrum in Bergschenhoek is het topdrukte: tachtig auto's per dag gaan daar door de schadescan, waarna gespecialiseerde monteurs alle hageldeukjes met een hamertje te lijf gaan. En de meldingen blijven binnenstromen.
As they release their first album in 16 years, the Vini Reilly-fronted band answer your questions on sandpaper record sleeves, having Harry Styles as a fan and inventing a new style of guitar music
Vini, you’ve created some of the most beautiful, ethereal music of the last 40 years. Is it true that in your youth you were in a violent Manchester street gang? Songy24
Vini Reilly [guitars, vocals, keyboards]: Gangs then had a different meaning. It was just “their lot” and “our lot”. We’d sling insults at each other. Then you’d play football in the park and realise you were playing with the local thugs. They were actually very funny, and I could have fun with them because I was so little. At the time I’d been going through a recurring depressive illness and felt I didn’t fit in at home, so I left without any clean clothing. I wanted to end my life so I decided to go to Moss Side, where the gangsters would shoot me. Of course they didn’t. I’d had a very happy childhood until my father died when I was doing my O-levels, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the really bad things gave me more than they could ever take. How can you know happiness until you’ve known deep sadness?
Bruce Mitchell [drums]: Vini does kick off, though, properly battles. We had to section him once, and six people had to hold him down.
Continue reading...To stay open-hearted and optimistic, you need hope, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. That’s not the same as expectation
Read more Leading questions
I’m nearly 30 and my first serious relationship just ended a month ago. It lasted eight months, she was my first girlfriend and first kiss, etc. She broke up with me in a very kind and respectful way, and I have been … OK, I guess.
The thing is, everyone has been saying to me, “But you must feel so much more confident now.” I don’t. My self-esteem and confidence wasn’t exactly soaring before I met her, but now I feel even less so. It just feels like most people are less tolerant or accepting of my shortcomings.
Continue reading...Pre-Covid, the movie landscape was dramatically different: YouTubers weren’t dominating the box office, video game spin-offs rarely made an impact and Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t yet the star of a slasher movie. Why such a flurry of innovation – and what will be next?
Cinema has always been a medium of research and development. At any given point, the industry is searching for yet another breakthrough that can drive it into the future. Synchronised sound in the 1920s. Technicolor in the 1930s. The invention of the modern blockbuster in the 1970s.
Conversely, the consensus is that, if the 2020s has a defining trend, then it is one of decline. The theatrical experience is under attack from all angles: streaming, YouTube, a once-in-a-century health crisis that shut cinemas down entirely. And yet, if you look closer, this has actually been one of the most innovative decades that cinema has ever seen. Whether down to technology or desperation, the film industry has spent these last few years figuring out new ways to make films that simply could not have existed even at the turn of the decade.
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GitHub has decided that, if everyone with an AI chatbot can file a bug bounty report, it may as well stop paying them like seasoned security researchers. Starting July 27, the Microsoft-owned code forge is overhauling its bug bounty program with a two-tier system that cuts rewards for public submissions while dangling much fatter payouts to a new invite-only group of researchers with proven track records. At the same time, newcomers will find themselves capped on how many reports they can submit until they've demonstrated they can produce something worth reading. The Microsoft-owned biz says that the shake-up is a response to the flood of low-effort and AI-generated reports now accompanying many bug bounty programs. Rather than paying more people to file more reports, GitHub wants to spend more on researchers who've proved they can find the real thing. Cathering Cassell, product security engineer at GitHub. “These changes are about two things: reducing the noise so we can focus on the signal, and building a program that serious researchers find rewarding to participate in.” For researchers sticking with the public program, a low-severity finding that previously earned between $500 and $1,000 will now bring in $250. Medium bugs top out at $2,000 instead of $5,000, high-severity flaws have been cut from as much as $20,000 to $5,000, and the maximum reward for a critical vulnerability falls from $30,000 to $10,000. The highest rewards are now reserved for GitHub's new invite-only VIP program. There, low-severity findings are worth $1,000, medium bugs $7,500, high-severity issues $20,000, and critical vulnerabilities at least $30,000. Entry isn't open to everyone. GitHub says invitations will be based on a proven history of valid reports, with researchers needing anything from one accepted critical vuln to seven accepted low-severity findings to qualify. GitHubb is also enabling HackerOne's "signal requirement," limiting how many reports new researchers can submit before they've established a history of legitimate findings. It says genuine newcomers will still have up to four opportunities to prove themselves, while reports already sitting in the backlog will continue to be assessed under the previous payout structure. The overhaul follows changes GitHub introduced earlier this year that tightened report-quality requirements and warned researchers against flooding the platform with AI-assisted submissions. GitHub is betting that fewer reports, from researchers with a proven track record, will do more for security than an ever-growing pile of AI-assisted submissions waiting for someone to read them. ®
No fewer than five of F1’s 11 teams will run a rookie driver during Friday’s first practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix, with McLaren, Mercedes, Alpine, Haas and Cadillac all altering their usual line-ups.
