• Benfica manager strongly criticised by Kick It Out

• Uefa investigating Real Madrid player’s claims

The anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out has accused José Mourinho of gaslighting for his response to Vinícius Júnior’s allegations of racist abuse. Vinícius reported that he was racially abused by Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni during Real Madrid’s Champions League playoff first leg. On Wednesday, Uefa said it would “investigate allegations of discriminatory behaviour”.

Mourinho, the Benfica manager, has been heavily criticised for appearing to suggest Vinícius had provoked the abuse with his celebration after scoring the only goal early in the second half.

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The drama about two startup innovators defeated by their egotistical overreach feels as if it presages these AI times

The crisis facing a couple of middle-aged Belgian tech bros in the 1990s might be better suited to a European streaming-TV drama – maybe with the two antiheroes’ travails confined to the first episode, setting up a lengthier intergenerational drama taking us to the present. Nonetheless, here it is: a feature film in the Berlin competition from screenwriter Angelo Tijssens and director Anke Blondé, handsomely produced and shot, and impeccably acted. But it’s also weirdly parochial, leaving you with the sense that it has not reached beyond its immediate concerns; and it’s not clear as to why, exactly, we need a fictionalised crisis from the 90s inspired by a real-life financial fraud scandal.

Well, perhaps the point is that very smallness and sadness: a pathetic tale of the first, almost-forgotten dotcom bust, which holds an omen for our AI-obsessed present. Arieh Worthalter and Jan Hammenecker play Geert and Luc, two balding guys who, in the late 90s, are Belgium’s pinup boys of tech innovation. Their startup company has gone public and made them both very rich, and all their local friends, family and businesses have plunged every cent of their savings into shares. Geert and Luc are now poised to turn the mud of Flanders into a European Silicon Valley.

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Milano Cortina​ has cutting‑edge replays, chase‑cam drones and exuberant commentary ​bringing a wave of unexpected nostalgia for anyone who grew up on 90s extreme‑sports games

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As someone whose childhood holidays consisted of narrowboating along the Grand Union canal or wandering the harbour-side at Whitby looking for vampires, I have never been on a skiing break. The idea of plummeting down a hill on anything but a plastic sledge is totally alien to me. And yet, my wife and I have been gripped by the Winter Olympics, especially the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events. And I think I know why. Those events are really channelling the look and feel of the wintery sports sims I’ve always loved – especially those that arrived during a golden period in the mid-1990s.

This was the era in which snowboarding was exploding in popularity, especially among twentysomethings with disposable incomes and no responsibilities – which coincidentally was the games industry’s target market at the time. Perhaps the first title to take advantage of this trend was Namco’s 1996 arcade game Alpine Surfer, which challenged players to stand on a snowboard-shaped controller and swoop as quickly as possible down a mountainside – it was one of the most physically exhausting coin-ops I ever played. Later that year came the self-consciously hip PlayStation sim Cool Boarders, and then in 1998, my absolute favourite, 1080° Snowboarding on the N64, with it’s intuitive analog controls and incredibly authentic sound effects of boards cutting through deep, crisp snow.

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fumi*23 has added a photo to the pool:

plants

The Cure

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Miscreants will need to find another avenue for malware shenanigans

Notepad++ has continued beefing up security with a release the project's author claims makes the "update process robust and effectively unexploitable."…

AMSTELVEEN (ANP) - Door de toenemende onzekerheid in de wereldhandel moet de Europese economie het steeds meer van de binnenlandse vraag hebben als groeimotor, staat in een rapport van KPMG. Volgens het advies- en accountantskantoor zwakt de economie van de eurozone dit jaar af tot een magere 1,1 procent, van 1,5 procent vorig jaar. Voor volgend jaar wordt weer een plus van 1,5 procent voorzien.

Europa kan wel profiteren van nieuwe handelsakkoorden, een stabiele Europese productiesector en de snelle opmars van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI). Een andere meevaller is dat de Europese inflatie naar verwachting daalt tot 1,7 procent. Dat komt onder andere doordat de gevolgen van eerdere stijgingen van de energieprijzen langzaam afnemen. In Nederland ligt de inflatie echter hoger. KPMG becijferde dat de inflatie in ons land dit jaar uitkomt op 2,4 procent.

Het consultancykantoor merkt ook op dat de toepassing van kunstmatige intelligentie in Europa sneller gaat dan vaak wordt gedacht.

Schrijver en voormalig Afrika-correspondent Daaf Borren (36) las als student Reizen met Herodotos (2004) van Ryszard Kapuściński en wist dat hij naar het continent Afrika wilde. Hij ziet nu in dat Kapuściński onbewust reisgezelschap voor hem was tijdens zijn jaren in Afrika.