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[A] little box with reeds of metal plates and bellows fixed to it

May 6 is World Accordion Day! It marks the date of the first accordion patent, filed May 6, 1829 by Austrian inventor Cyrill Demian. World Accordion Day was created by the CIA* in 2009 and is a"promotion for the accordion in which every accordion enthusiast can participate and help bring our accordion world together as well as strongly promote the accordion."

While earlier similar instruments existed, Demian's was the first to allow the playing of a chord with a single button (hence the name). It would go on to become a staple for a wide variety of music genres, featuring in blues, jazz, Vaudeville, polka, norteño, rock, zydeco, and just about every other genre I can think of (including a very specific subgenre). There are lots of ways to celebrate World Accordion Day, including playing your accordion! If you don't know how to play the accordion, there are lots of ways to learn, including online! I like Accordion Love myself, but there are other options out there too. If playing isn't for you, you can read about the accordion's history in the US in Accordion Revolution: A People's History, or listen to Accordion Noir online or on the radio (geographic limitations may apply). And if you hurry, you can still get a 2026 Accordion Babes pinup calendar! *The Confédération Internationale des Accordéonistes, natch!

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Claude Managed Agents Can Engage In a 'Dreaming' Process To Preserve Memories

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: At its Code with Claude developers' conference, Anthropic has introduced what it calls "dreaming" to Claude Managed Agents. Dreaming, in this case, is a process of going over recent events and identifying specific things that are worth storing in "memory" to inform future tasks and interactions. Dreaming is a feature that is currently in research preview and limited to Managed Agents on the Claude Platform. Managed Agents are a higher-level alternative to building directly on the Messages API that Anthropic describes as a "pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure." It's intended for situations where you want multiple agents working on a task or project to some end point over several minutes or hours.

Anthropic describes dreaming as a scheduled process, in which sessions and memory stores are reviewed, and specific memories are curated. This is important because context windows are limited for LLMs, and important information can be lost over lengthy projects. On the chat side of things, many models use a process called compaction, whereby lengthy conversations are periodically analyzed, and the models attempt to remove irrelevant information from the context window while keeping what's actually important for the ongoing conversation, project, or task. However, that process, as I described it, is usually limited to a specific conversation with a single agent. "Dreaming" is a periodically recurring process in which past sessions and memory stores can be analyzed across agents, and important patterns are identified and saved to memory for the future. Users will be able to choose between an automatic process, or reviewing changes to memory directly.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Manchester City’s WSL title winners 2025-26: player-by-player ratings

Alex Greenwood has won the first WSL title of her career and Khadija Shaw has been the league’s standout player

Ayaka Yamashita This has been a solid season for the Japan international, with her seven Women’s Super League clean sheets putting her in contention for the Golden Glove going into the final round of matches. Yamashita’s distribution has been a strength, aiding the way Andrée Jeglertz wants to play. 7

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Fertiliser shortages will have ‘dramatic’ effect on global food prices, warns farming boss

Powerful property and farming firm Grosvenor Group says knock-on effect of Iran war could arrive next year

Fertiliser shortages caused by the Iran war have driven up costs for UK farmers by up to 70% and will have a “dramatic” impact on food prices globally next year, according to one of Britain’s most powerful property and farming companies.

Mark Preston, executive trustee of the 349-year-old Grosvenor Group, controlled by the Duke of Westminster, said fertiliser “was already quite expensive” before the 50% to 70% surge in prices since the start of the Iran war in late February.

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Keir Starmer makes late pitch to voters turning to Greens and Reform

As Labour faces record-breaking losses in Thursday’s local elections, prime minister says rivals are unfit to lead

Labour is braced for record-breaking losses in Thursday’s local elections in England, which could be decisive for Keir Starmer’s future as prime minister.

In a message to voters on Thursday, Starmer said Reform’s Nigel Farage and the Greens’ Zack Polanski were “not fit to meet this moment of great global instability” and that only Labour was putting the national interest first.

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‘Half the peloton is ill’: cowpats blamed as cyclists fall sick after race in Belgium

  • Some riders hospitalised after Famenne Ardenne Classic

  • Dung may have sprayed on to riders in wet conditions

Several cyclists, including riders due to start the Giro d’Italia on Friday, fell ill after a Belgian one-day race, with cow manure on the roads suspected to be the cause.

Three Lotto-Intermarché riders suffered from abdominal pain, diarrhoea, fever and vomiting, and were briefly hospitalised, the team said from Bulgaria, where the Giro begins on Friday.

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Dembélé ends Bayern hopes to send PSG into final showdown with Arsenal

It cannot always be a laugh a minute. Paris Saint-Germain will play Arsenal in the Champions League final and they made sure of that by getting serious, nullifying an off-key Bayern Munich and rarely wobbling after adding to their first-leg lead. Luis Enrique’s team should have won by more in a match that did not, and probably never could, hit the previous week’s heights but their triumph was underpinned by an aptitude for the dirtier work that would serve them well in Budapest.

Ousmane Dembélé’s emphatic third-minute finish seemed to have ended this semi-final’s goalfest and the regret for Vincent Kompany will be that Bayern were a yard short of their sharpest all night. It could have been different if one of their openings before the break, Jamal Musiala spurning the best, had gone in but Harry Kane’s added-time goal came far too late.

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‘De Afhaalchinees’, ‘Hila voorbij de Taliban’ en ‘Wakker in Paraguay’ genomineerd voor Zilveren Nipkowschijf

Qian van Binsbergen won met haar eerste documentairereeks in 2023 al de Nipkowprijs. Het Verhaal van Nederland (NTR) krijgt een speciale vermelding van de jury.

VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Genomineerden Nipkowschijf bekend: series van Omroep Zwart, AvroTros en VPRO maken kans

Ohatobashi Bridge - Nagasaki - Japan.

on the water photography has added a photo to the pool:

Ohatobashi Bridge - Nagasaki - Japan.

Located at the mouth of the Nakashima River, this illuminated white bridge connects the city center to areas near the Dejima Wharf and Nagasaki Port. It is characterized by its modern white arch and vertical supports, which are strikingly lit up at night, often reflecting colorful glows from nearby traffic lights and harbor activities.