Na dagenlang gedoe zijn minister Agema (Zorg) en minister Heinen (Financiën) het eens over het aanvullend zorgakkoord. De wens van Agema om jaarlijks 400 miljoen euro extra te besteden aan onder meer kunstmatige intelligentie heeft het niet gehaald.

De VS stoppen tijdelijk met het inplannen van visumgesprekken voor internationale studenten, zodat de Amerikaanse overheid in die tijd de mogelijkheden kan uitbreiden om socialemediaberichten van visumaanvragers te controleren.

MOSKOU (ANP/AFP) - Rusland heeft melding gemaakt van een enorme Oekraïense droneaanval op Russisch grondgebied. Het ministerie van Defensie zegt dat bijna driehonderd van de onbemande vliegtuigjes zijn neergehaald door de luchtafweer.

Zeker 42 van de drones zijn uitgeschakeld boven de regio Moskou, meldt de gouverneur op sociale media. Daar toonde hij foto's van een brandend huis. Vliegvelden rond de hoofdstad moesten vluchten urenlang opschorten.

Rusland voerde afgelopen weekend ook grootschalige drone- en raketaanvallen uit op doelen in Oekraïne. Daarbij vielen zondag volgens de Oekraïense autoriteiten zeker dertien burgerdoden, onder wie drie kinderen.

Oekraïne en Rusland verwijten elkaar ondertussen het vredesproces te dwarsbomen. Ondanks maandenlange druk uit de Verenigde Staten lijkt er nog geen zicht te zijn op een akkoord om een einde te maken aan de oorlog.

EINDHOVEN (ANP) - Eneco-topman As Tempelman wordt de nieuwe bestuursvoorzitter van verlichtingsbedrijf Signify. Tempelman zal vanaf 1 september de hoogste functie bij Signify op zich nemen.

De voormalige lampendivisie van Philips wordt momenteel op interim-basis geleid door Željko Kosanović die ook financieel directeur is, na het aftreden van de vorige topman Eric Rondolat in april.

Signify houdt in juli een buitengewone aandeelhoudersvergadering waar gestemd kan worden over de benoeming van Tempelman tot topman.

SimpleHelp was the vector for the attack

DragonForce ransomware infected a managed service provider, and its customers, after attackers exploited security flaws in remote monitoring and management tool SimpleHelp.…

Fat Burns ☮ has added a photo to the pool:

Thank you very much for the visits, faves and comments. Cheers.

Cockatiel (it was difficult to get a good photograph; they hide in dense trees when they are not on the ground eating)
Scientific Name: Nymphicus hollandicus
Description: The Cockatiel is an unusual member of the cockatoo family. It is small in size, and has a slender body and long pointed tail, which is more characteristic of the smaller parrots. Its plumage is mostly grey, paler below, with a white wing patch, orange cheeks and a distinctive pointed crest. The male can be identified by its bright yellow forehead, face and crest. Young Cockatiels resemble the adult female, although the young males usually have a brighter yellow face. The Cockatiel is not found naturally in any other country, but is a popular cage bird, second only to the Budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulates. The Cockatiel does not have the screeching voice of many other parrots and may learn to 'speak'.
Distribution: The Cockatiel is widespread throughout mainland Australia, but is uncommon in Tasmania, with only a few sightings being reported to date.
Habitat: The Cockatiel is seen in pairs or small flocks, in most types of open country, usually near water. It is common throughout its range, especially in the north and the more arid inland areas.
Seasonal movements: Throughout its range, the Cockatiel is strongly nomadic, moving around in response to the availability of food and water.
Feeding: Cockatiels feed on a variety of grass seeds, nuts, berries and grain. They may feed either on the ground or in trees, and always in small to large numbers. Cockatiels roost in trees near water and travel from these areas in large flocks to feeding grounds.
Breeding: Cockatiels may breed at any time, in response to suitable periods of rain, especially in the more arid regions. Both sexes share the incubation of the eggs, which are laid in a hollow, high up in trees. Suitable trees are either in or close to water. Cockatiels enter the nest hollow tail first.
Calls: Although mostly silent, the Cockatiel gives a long and distinctive "queel-queel" in flight. It does not have the screeching voice of many other parrots and may learn to 'speak'.
Minimum Size: 30cm
Maximum Size: 33cm
Average size: 32cm
Average weight: 90g
Breeding season: Normally July to December in south of range
Clutch Size: 2 to 9, usually 5
Incubation: 19 days
Nestling Period: 30 days
(Source: www.birdsinbakyards.net)

© Chris Burns 2025
__________________________________________

All rights reserved.
This image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying and recording without my written consent.

Fat Burns ☮ has added a photo to the pool:

Thank you very much for the visits, faves and comments. Cheers.

Cockatiel (it was difficult to get a good photograph; they hide in dense trees when they are not on the ground eating)
Scientific Name: Nymphicus hollandicus
Description: The Cockatiel is an unusual member of the cockatoo family. It is small in size, and has a slender body and long pointed tail, which is more characteristic of the smaller parrots. Its plumage is mostly grey, paler below, with a white wing patch, orange cheeks and a distinctive pointed crest. The male can be identified by its bright yellow forehead, face and crest. Young Cockatiels resemble the adult female, although the young males usually have a brighter yellow face. The Cockatiel is not found naturally in any other country, but is a popular cage bird, second only to the Budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulates. The Cockatiel does not have the screeching voice of many other parrots and may learn to 'speak'.
Distribution: The Cockatiel is widespread throughout mainland Australia, but is uncommon in Tasmania, with only a few sightings being reported to date.
Habitat: The Cockatiel is seen in pairs or small flocks, in most types of open country, usually near water. It is common throughout its range, especially in the north and the more arid inland areas.
Seasonal movements: Throughout its range, the Cockatiel is strongly nomadic, moving around in response to the availability of food and water.
Feeding: Cockatiels feed on a variety of grass seeds, nuts, berries and grain. They may feed either on the ground or in trees, and always in small to large numbers. Cockatiels roost in trees near water and travel from these areas in large flocks to feeding grounds.
Breeding: Cockatiels may breed at any time, in response to suitable periods of rain, especially in the more arid regions. Both sexes share the incubation of the eggs, which are laid in a hollow, high up in trees. Suitable trees are either in or close to water. Cockatiels enter the nest hollow tail first.
Calls: Although mostly silent, the Cockatiel gives a long and distinctive "queel-queel" in flight. It does not have the screeching voice of many other parrots and may learn to 'speak'.
Minimum Size: 30cm
Maximum Size: 33cm
Average size: 32cm
Average weight: 90g
Breeding season: Normally July to December in south of range
Clutch Size: 2 to 9, usually 5
Incubation: 19 days
Nestling Period: 30 days
(Source: www.birdsinbakyards.net)

© Chris Burns 2025
__________________________________________

All rights reserved.
This image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying and recording without my written consent.

Many nations have some form of national identification number, especially around taxes. Argentina is no exception.

Their "CUIT" (Clave Única de Identificación Tributaria) and "CUIL" (Código Único de Identificación Laboral) are formatted as "##-########-#".

Now, as datasets often don't store things in their canonical representation, Nick's co-worker was given a task: "given a list of numbers, reformat them to look like CUIT/CUIL. That co-worker went off for five days, and produced this Java function.

public String normalizarCuitCuil(String cuitCuilOrigen){
	String valorNormalizado = new String();
	
	if (cuitCuilOrigen == null || "".equals(cuitCuilOrigen) || cuitCuilOrigen.length() < MINIMA_CANTIDAD_ACEPTADA_DE_CARACTERES_PARA_NORMALIZAR){
		valorNormalizado = "";
	}else{
		StringBuilder numerosDelCuitCuil = new StringBuilder(13);
		cuitCuilOrigen = cuitCuilOrigen.trim();
		
		// Se obtienen solo los números:
		Matcher buscadorDePatron =  patternNumeros.matcher(cuitCuilOrigen);
		while (buscadorDePatron.find()){
			numerosDelCuitCuil.append(buscadorDePatron.group());
		}
		
		// Se le agregan los guiones:
		valorNormalizado = numerosDelCuitCuil.toString().substring(0,2) 
							+ "-"
							+ numerosDelCuitCuil.toString().substring(2,numerosDelCuitCuil.toString().length()-1) 
							+ "-"
							+ numerosDelCuitCuil.toString().substring(numerosDelCuitCuil.toString().length()-1, numerosDelCuitCuil.toString().length());
		
	}
	return valorNormalizado;
}

We start with a basic sanity check that the string exists and is long enough. If it isn't, we return an empty string, which already annoys me, because an empty result is not a good way to communicate "I failed to parse".

But assuming we have data, we construct a string builder and trim whitespace. And already we have a problem: we already validated that the string was long enough, but if the string contained more trailing whitespace than a newline, we're looking at a problem. Now, maybe we can assume the data is good, but the next line implies that we can't rely on that- they create a regex matcher to identify numeric values, and for each numeric value they find, they append it to our StringBuilder. This implies that the string may contain non-numeric values which need to be rejected, which means our length validation was still wrong.

So either the data is clean and we're overvalidating, or the data is dirty and we're validating in the wrong order.

But all of that's a preamble to a terrible abuse of string builders, where they discard all the advantages of using a StringBuilder by calling toString again and again and again. Now, maybe the function caches results or the compiler can optimize it, but the result is a particularly unreadable blob of slicing code.

Now, this is ugly, but at least it works, assuming the input data is good. It definitely should never pass a code review, but it's not the kind of bad code that leaves one waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

No, what gets me about this is that it took five days to write. And according to Nick, the responsible developer wasn't just slacking off or going to meetings the whole time, they were at their desk poking at their Java IDE and looking confused for all five days.

And of course, because it took so long to write the feature, management didn't want to waste more time on kicking it back via a code review. So voila: it got forced through and released to production since it passed testing.

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Elons meest fallische project is meteen ook het project waarbij alle andere verbleken: de mensheid in staat stellen een multiplanetair RAS te worden. Testvlucht negen van SpaceX' Starship - de Super Heavy booster-raket met onbemande bemanningsmodule Starship erop geschroefd - was visueel minder spectaculair dan voorgaanden, omdat het vangen van Super Heavy ditmaal niet op de planning stond en deze gewoon in de oceaan mocht vallen. Maar wat dus wel een belangrijk succes was: dit was de eerste Super Heavy die al eerder gevlogen en gevangen was en opnieuw werd gebruikt. Wat geen succes was: bemanningsmodule Starship die opnieuw desintegreerde tijdens het herbetreden van de atmosfeer. Maar SpaceX bekijkt het positief, claimt dat het "once more returned Starship to space", en dat is inderdaad waar! Ze komen er wel. Veel meer beeld na de breek

Sfeerbeheer met Elon, vier uur voor lancering

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Bemanningsmodule herbetreedt atmosfeer

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Vorige keren werd Super Heavy gevangen

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Ook de bemanningsmodule bereikte voorheen veilig het water

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De automobilist die in juni vorig jaar een voetganger doodreed aan de Nieuwe Damlaan in Schiedam moet vier jaar de cel in. Ook mag hij twee jaar niet autorijden. Tegen de Schiedammer werd zes jaar gevangenisstraf en tien jaar rijontzegging geëist, maar daar gaat de rechter niet in mee.