CLEVELAND (ANP) - De basketballers van New York Knicks hebben zich voor het eerst sinds 1999 geplaatst voor de finale van de NBA. De ploeg van trainer Mike Brown won in de eindstrijd van de Eastern Conference ook het vierde duel van Cleveland Cavaliers (93-130). In de strijd om de titel is regerend kampioen Oklahoma City Thunder of San Antonio Spurs de tegenstander. De finale van de Western Conference kent na vier wedstrijden een 2-2-tussenstand.

New York Knicks won alleen in 1970 en 1973 de titel in de NBA. Deze play-offs zijn de Knicks op dreef, met maandagavond de elfde zege op rij. De club zou ook alle vier de duels in de finale moeten winnen om het record van Golden State Warriors van vijftien achtereenvolgende zeges uit 2017 te evenaren.

De finale begint op 3 juni.

Boswachters heten eigenlijk 'groene boa's', en dat klinkt alsof we het over duurzame robotboa's hebben, maar dat groen slaat simpelweg op de vingers van boa's na een dagje plantjes en bomen aaien. Midden in hun territorium, zo'n bos waar geen mens meer een stap durft te zetten, doen die bosboa's niemand kwaad en kunnen ze zich met hun vuurwapen en hond (hebben ze nu al) lekker uitleven op paddenstoelen en eekhoorntjes. Prima, dat is de natuur. Maar nu wil de Tweede Kamer die dubieuze figuren ook een WAPENSTOK geven. Een hond en een vuurwapen zijn niet genoeg, ze moeten kennelijk kunnen meppen. En we weten allemaal dat boa's het helemaal niet leuk vinden om bomen, planten en diertjes te meppen. Wat ze wel leuk vinden om te meppen: mensen. Dat zien we al in treinen, en straks dus ook in die eens zo vreedzame, prachtige bossen. Welnu, nooit meer Quackjeswater voor ons.

Does the footballer have any regrets? This documentary doesn’t care to ask deep questions. Still, his colourful career from midfielder to movie star is an undeniably great story

Do not come to the Untold UK documentary series about some of our greatest – or at least most famous – or at least most infamous – footballers looking for insight, interrogation, reflection, analysis or contemplation. Come for energetic hagiography and celebration. Or fuck off, as its latest subject, Vinnie Jones, would almost certainly put it.

Even if you have never watched an entire football match – despite your dad and his friends’ best efforts as they solemnly lined up cans of Boddingtons and commandeered the living room every FA and World Cup final, perhaps – you will have heard of Vinnie Jones. For most of the 90s he was hard to miss – first as a player, then as a liability making endless tabloid headlines, and then as a film star. His beetle-browed, charismatic, menacing face would have stared out at you between the crossed shotguns resting over his shoulders when the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels marketing campaign briefly took over the world.

Untold UK: Vinnie Jones is on Netflix

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The Premier League season is over, but what did Guardian football writers enjoy, dislike or marvel at over the last nine months?

Goalkeepers never usually get a mention for this award but David Raya played an integral role in Arsenal finally getting over the line, winning the Premier League’s Golden Glove award for a third year in a row thanks to 19 clean sheets. Declan Rice and Bruno Fernandes were the outstanding outfield players. Ed Aarons

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Wat beleven we toch een bijzondere periode. Het voelt buiten eerder als hartje zomer dan als eind mei. Na een zonovergoten en ronduit zomers pinksterweekend doet de atmosfeer er voor vandaag nog een schepje bovenop. Vandaag staat namelijk de warmste dag van het jaar tot nu toe op het programma.

Ondermijning tast de fundamenten van onze samenleving aan, is sluimerend en vaak onzichtbaar. Dat is de conclusie van het eerste Dreigingsbeeld Ondermijning Nederland (DON) dat is opgesteld door het Strategisch Kenniscentrum Ondermijnende Criminaliteit, onderdeel van het Ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid.

The waters are even more dangerous than we imagined. Have a look at some of the crazed whales our brave submitters and commenters have encountered in the wild.

First comes an Anonymous tale of woe:

Our company makes apps for businesses. We have 1 MAIN client whose CEO can make or break our company, and his wish is our command. He sent a priority email on a Friday night saying the app was slow and needed to be fixed.

The client CEO is so important that he works directly with our CEO, who decided to PM this huge issue.

All weekend, we were trying out tons of different things to optimize this "slow" app that "wasn't loading or refreshing." We deployed the app Monday night after a weekend of unpaid overtime (darn salary). On Tuesday, the account manager made a bug card to officially represent the work we did, and they posted a previously-unseen video of the slowness.

There is a refresh icon that spins when clicked. The video was of the refresh icon, and it was spinning for an extra second after the data loaded (and jumping 2 pixels from padding styling).

That is what was high priority.

I mean, we all hate the system, but sometimes the system is actually there to protect us.

Next, we have Daniel Orner's ongoing peril:

We do digital flyers/circulars/ads. Eight years ago, that meant we got PDFs from retailers and turned them into digital content. One huge retailer (hundreds of stores) wanted a dynamically-created flyer that would have up-to-date pricing twice a day. We didn't have time to build out a full digital solution (which would have made sense), so instead we spent six months banging together a solution with spit and duct tape which baked out hundreds of PDFs every morning and afternoon. This one retailer was responsible for about 40% of our processing power.

We're finally getting somewhat closer to phasing this out, but "it worked" for this long ...

Finally, let's be grateful Brian escaped with his life!

Worked for a company that was building a component of a high-profile weapons platform for one of the major military suppliers. We had taken over the project from another company that was under-performing, so we were already behind schedule from the minute the contract was signed. Of course this company saw fit to treat us more as a subsidiary than a subcontractor. Including, for a time, sending one of their own managers to sit in our lab and observe (read: babysit) us. On Saturdays. Then they demanded we start working shifts to make more use of the lab equipment, and I got the bad draw: 3 AM - noon. Never mind that I had just gotten married (they actually called to tell me this while I was on vacation the week after my wedding) and would like to actually spend some time with my wife ...

That experience soured me on the whole military-industrial complex for a long time. To this day I still get headhunters pinging me to work for that megacorp; I just chuckle and delete their messages.

Have these tales knocked loose any foul memories that your brain tried to repress? Send them to us!

Hij was een van de laatste nog levende muzikanten van de zogenoemde bebopgeneratie in de jazzmuziek, die jazz een expressievere inslag gaf.

The CEO of SaaS-y productivity tools outfit ClickUp has announced 22 percent of the company’s workers will lose their jobs, but promised the savings will allow the company to offer some survivors seven-figure salaries. CEO Zeb Evans made that pledge late last week in a Xeet that opens “Today we reduced headcount by 22 percent. The business is the strongest it's ever been” and then tries to explain the dichotomy of those two ideas by adding “I did it because the way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing, and to win the future, ClickUp needs to change with it.” What follows may now be familiar to readers who have followed our coverage of layoffs at Cisco, Workday, Cloudflare, and even the government of New Zealand: In 2026, AI is no longer optional, so organizations need to hire people who are good at using it to make themselves and their employers more productive. Evans said the layoffs at ClickUp are not about cutting costs. “Most savings from this change will flow directly back into the people who stay. We'll be introducing million-dollar salary bands. If you create outsized impact using AI, you'll be paid outside of traditional band,” he wrote. Another reason for the changes is Evans’ ambition to restructure ClickUp into what he describes as a “100x org”. “The goal is 100x output. The roles required to build at the highest level are fundamentally different than they were a year ago,” he wrote. “Incremental improvements to existing systems won't get us there. We need new ones. That means creating enough disruption to rebuild rather than iterate on what's already broken.” And that disruption means hiring “10x people that have embraced and adopted new ways of working.” AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down Evans offered the example of “... great engineers, the ones who can orchestrate, architect, and review, are becoming 100x engineers. They're not writing code. They're directing agents that write code. The skill is judgment.” “AI makes the best engineers wildly more productive, and everyone else using AI slows these engineers down,” he wrote. The CEO also suggested that those who wield AI well “will always have a job. They become owners of the AI systems – agent managers.” He also thinks that some front-line workers who specialize in customer interaction will be safe. “In a world that will become saturated with AI communication, the human touch will matter more than anything to customers,” he wrote. “This is a bottleneck that you shouldn't replace – even when agents are high enough quality to do video meetings. One-on-one meeting time with customers is something that shouldn't be automated. The systems around the meetings should be - so that front-liners spend nearly 100 percent of their time with customers.” Evans also thinks that these skills will remain relevant. “You should aim to retain these employees for decades. The context they have and their ability to efficiently orchestrate and review will be nearly impossible to replace,” he wrote. “Compensation bands of today should be thrown out the door. We're introducing $1 million cash/year salary bands with a path available to nearly everyone in the company if they produce 100x impact by creating or managing AI systems.” The future is not fewer people. It's different work and better rewards for those who embrace it The CEO wrapped up his post with a prediction: “The future is not fewer people. It's different work, new roles, and better rewards for those who embrace it. We're already seeing entirely new roles emerge, like Agent Managers, that didn't exist a year ago.” Evans then declared he has “never been more certain about where we're headed.” The first comment X shows your correspondent when I viewed the CEO’s post opens “I'm so fucking glad I'm retired now. This shit is exhausting. Can't wait until you're booed at my granddaughter's graduate ceremony” – a reference to the many recent commencement ceremonies at which graduates jeer when speakers comment on how AI will change the economy, perhaps because entry-level jobs are becoming scarce as AI – presumably wielded by 10x and 100x people – automates away some work. ®