Een nieuw horloge dat voortkomt uit samenwerking van het goedkope merk Swatch en het luxemerk Audermars Piguet blijkt zeer gewild. Nadat de sfeer grimmig werd voor de verkoop zaterdag in een winkelcentrum in Leidschendam, bleven meerdere winkels dicht. Waar komt de hype rond deze horloges vandaan?

INTERVIEW Enthusiasm among managers to adopt AI tools has outpaced developers' ability to learn those tools and use them effectively. Moshe Sambol, VP of customer solutions at software observability outfit Lightrun, told The Register in an interview that he speaks with a lot of companies. Some of the developers in those organizations, he said, are very comfortable with AI tools. "But the reality is that a lot of developers are much earlier in the curve," he said. "The expectations of businesses are getting ahead of where the developers are in terms of their mental model and in terms of the training that they're providing, the enablement they're providing to make their teams comfortable with the tools, and the rate at which these tools are evolving." Sambol said the degree of AI tool adoption varies. "I absolutely have customers who've told their developers, 'You don't write code anymore. You review code. No one should write a line of code unless for some reason you failed after three attempts getting GenAI to do it,'" he said. "I have customers like that. I don't know if I should name them, but absolutely." And he said on the other side of the spectrum, there are organizations like banks that are just starting to roll AI tools out due to compliance obligations and traditional industry caution. "It's an exciting time to be adopting these tools and learning these tools, but it puts a lot of pressure on the developer," he said. "It puts this expectation of being more productive." Not everyone manages that, and Sambol said he has a lot of sympathy for developers who have been directed to use AI tools without training and organizational guidance. Generative AI models will produce a lot of code quickly, he said, and because the code seems correct initially, it often gets pushed forward. "If it's not creating bugs en masse today, it's just pain waiting to happen," he said. "The number one question I think we have to be asking developers is, 'Can you explain that code? Have you validated that the code actually fits in the context of the broader system?'" Sambol said the answer isn't necessarily yes or no because developers have different levels of experience and often work on large projects where they focus only on a specific part of the code base. It's common in enterprises, he said, that no one person will understand the entire system end-to-end, which is why problem resolution often requires a group of people. The issue he sees is that generative AI systems don't help bridge the missing knowledge gap. They don't provide the context to understand all the components involved. Sambol went on to describe an incident in which a developer was using an AI assistant to build an Ansible automated workflow. "The generative AI was creating the Ansible template for him, which seems like a perfect match – it's drudge work," he explained. "And it's much better at getting the syntax exactly right." It worked. And then it stopped working. "The system that he was deploying to, all of a sudden, he could not get the component up," Sambol said. "It just wouldn't start. A process that had been going smoothly for a couple of hours in the morning, now all of a sudden, his service is down and it will not run. "And he's pulling his hair out trying to unstitch the day's work so far to figure out what went wrong, why is the service not working," he said, adding that the AI agent proved unhelpful by going off in the wrong direction, reinstalling the operating system, and undertaking other ineffective steps to effect repairs. What happened, Sambol explained, is that earlier in the day, the developer had installed the component in a certain way – it was running in a container with a systemd service. As such, it needed access to the ports on the device, which precluded running the component in Docker. "So the AI model re-wrapped it, repackaged it, and deployed it in a different way, but kept the original one running," he explained. "So it was simply a matter of the fact that the one he had initially deployed was still running and it was blocking the port and the second one couldn't run. "It's a fairly simple, easy-to-understand problem once you see it, but he lost the entire afternoon going down all kinds of dead ends with the AI looking at this, looking at that, because the AI model didn't remember that it had guided him to deploy the system a certain way earlier in the day." Sambol said various studies show a significant percentage of AI generated code contains errors and creates technical debt. That's not to say human developers are without fault. Sambol said developers have their own weaknesses. Many companies, he said, have offshored or globally distributed development teams, so there's a lot of variation. He argues that it's important to acknowledge that imperfection and work toward processes that improve results. One way to do that is to automate the prompting process in a way that makes it more repeatable. "When you do that, you identify where you're starting to get good results and you don't expect everybody to come up with a well-structured long prompt." Sambol added, "I think these tools are absolutely getting better. And so I'm reluctant to call any of them junk or deeply flawed. They're getting better shockingly rapidly. If you can take advantage of a couple of different ones – with a human being in the loop – then you are more likely to get output that is at least as good as you were getting before." ®

Reincorporation is a photo essay depicting our two weeks in the badlands of South Dakota.

What's going on with the U.S. job market? "The economy is growing. Unemployment is low," notes the Washington Post. "And yet, for millions of workers, finding a job has become harder than at almost any other point in decades," with the hiring rate "well below pre-pandemic levels for more than a year."

Part of the problem? "Of the net 369,000 positions added across the entire economy since the start of 2025, health care alone accounted for nearly 800,000 — meaning every other sector, taken together, shed jobs." By the end of 2025 nearly half of college graduates ages 22 to 27 were working at jobs that didn't require a degree, according to stats from New York's Federal Reserve Bank.


The headline unemployment rate, at 4.2%, looks healthy. But that figure has been buoyed by a shrinking labor force: Fewer people are actively looking for work, which keeps the rate down even as hiring slows...


[Some large tech companies] are trying to recalibrate after their hiring sprees of 2021 and 2022, when many had raised pay, offered flexible schedules and signed people quickly... Higher interest rates have also made expansion more expensive, pushing many firms to invest in technology rather than headcount. Another reason hiring has slowed is uncertainty about AI. Even though the technology has not yet replaced large numbers of workers, it is already shaping how companies think about hiring. "I don't think this is AI displacement," said Ben Zweig, chief executive of Revelio Labs, a workforce data company. "What we're seeing is anticipatory." Instead of rushing to bring on new workers, some firms are waiting to see how the technology evolves and which tasks it will eventually take over.

A 39-year-old web developer tells the Post it took 453 job applications to get a handful of interviews and two offers. And a journalism school graduate said they'd sent hundreds of job applications but most led nowhere, and they're now couch-surfing to save money.

But the problem seems even worse for young people. One 18-year-old told the Post that in a year and a half of job searching, they'd yet to even meet an employer in person.

The unemployment rate for people ages 22 to 27 who recently completed college hit 5.6% in the final months of 2025 — well above the 4.2% rate for all workers, according to national data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York... At one point last summer, new workforce entrants made up a larger share of the unemployed than at any point since the late 1980s — higher even than during the Great Recession. When hiring slows, the door closes first on those without an existing foothold. For the class of 2026, the timing could hardly be worse.

"It is getting increasingly clear that young people are being more affected by AI than older workers," Zweig said. Companies are not eliminating jobs at scale, but many are slow to hire junior workers. At the same time, older workers are staying in the labor force longer, leaving fewer openings for new arrivals. Even when jobs are available, the bar has shifted. Positions once considered entry level now often require several years of experience, technical expertise and familiarity with AI tools. With fewer openings and more applicants, companies are holding out for candidates who can do the job immediately and need little training... Employers are also looking for a different mix of skills. An analysis of millions of job postings by Indeed found that communication skills now appear in nearly 42% of all listings, while leadership skills feature in nearly a third — capabilities that are harder to prove on a résumé and harder still to demonstrate without an existing professional network. Christine Beck, a career coach who works with early-career job seekers, said employers are asking more of the people they do hire.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

De Doelen viert dit weekend het 60-jarig bestaan met een programma vol muziek en ontmoeting, datgene waar het gebouw al decennia lang voor staat. Rijnmond neemt een duik in de geschiedenis van een pand vol verhalen.

BORDEAUX (ANP) - Tennisser Tallon Griekspoor is er bij het challengertoernooi in Bordeaux niet in geslaagd de finale te bereiken. In de halve finale verloor Griekspoor van de Belg Raphaël Collignon, de nummer 68 van de mondiale ranglijst. Het werd 7-5 6-1 voor Collignon.

In de finale neemt Collignon het op tegen de Argentijn Juan Manuel Cerúndolo. Collignon strijdt zondag in de finale voor een zevende titel op Challenger-niveau en zijn derde dit jaar, na eerdere eindzeges in Pau en Monza.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - ASML gaat het Indiase Tata Electronics helpen bij het opzetten van een chipfabriek, een van de eerste in het Aziatische land. Dat hebben de bedrijven bekendgemaakt tijdens het tweedaagse bezoek van de Indiase premier Narendra Modi aan Nederland.

Voor de Veldhovense chipmachinefabrikant is India een interessante nieuwe markt. Vandaar dat ASML maar wat graag helpt met bijvoorbeeld het trainen van mensen in India. Zaterdag is in Nederland meteen een overeenkomst ondertekend. Die is nog erg vrijblijvend. Maar door de komst van de nieuwe fabriek kan ASML op den duur waarschijnlijk wel lucratieve nieuwe orders voor chipmachines tegemoetzien.

Tata Electronics behoort net als staalproducent Tata Steel en autoconcern Tata Motors tot het Tata-conglomeraat. De onderneming wil in Dholera, in de westelijke deelstaat Gujarat, India's eerste commerciële fabriek voor zogenoemde 300-millimeterchips neerzetten. Die chips zijn bedoeld voor gebruik in de automobielsector en mobiele apparaten. Ze moeten ook gebruikt kunnen worden voor toepassingen met kunstmatige intelligentie (AI).

Grote plannen

India heeft echter grotere plannen met chips. Het land wil dat er minstens tien geavanceerde chipfabrieken in het land komen, heeft premier Modi in februari gezegd bij de opening van een assemblagefabriek van het Amerikaanse chipconcern Micron Technology in Sanand.

ASML-topman Christophe Fouquet vindt de Indiase ambities erg interessant. "India's snelgroeiende halfgeleidersector vertegenwoordigt veel veelbelovende kansen, en we zijn toegewijd aan het aangaan van langetermijnpartnerschappen in de regio", laat hij weten. "We zijn verheugd en vereerd om onze technologische expertise bij te dragen en om talent in India te helpen ontwikkelen."

Tijdens het bezoek van Modi tekenen Nederland en India ook een overeenkomst die erop is gericht de samenwerking tussen de landen te versterken op het gebied van onder meer handel, veiligheid, watermanagement en nieuwe technologie. Ook behelst de afspraak dat er meer overleg komt tussen regeringsleiders, ministers en hoge ambtenaren van de twee landen.

LONDEN (ANP/RTR/AFP) - Tienduizenden mensen zijn in Londen op de been voor een anti-immigratieprotest en een pro-Palestijnse demonstratie die gelijktijdig bezig is. De politie heeft naar eigen zeggen te maken met de grootste operatie in jaren om de openbare orde te handhaven.

Er zijn 4000 agenten ingezet om de demonstraties ordelijk te laten verlopen. Kort nadat beide marsen waren begonnen, meldde de politie dat er elf arrestaties waren verricht voor diverse overtredingen.

De anti-immigratiemars wordt georganiseerd door de radicaalrechtse activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, beter bekend als Tommy Robinson. Bij die demonstratie zijn veel Britse en Engelse vlaggen te zien.

Tegenstanders

De regering verbood voor de demonstratie elf "buitenlandse extreemrechtse opruiers" de toegang tot het land.

Een eind verderop is een grote pro-Palestijnse demonstratie bezig, waarbij ook tegenstanders van de anti-immigratiemars zich hebben aangesloten. Er zijn daar onder meer leuzen te horen gericht tegen het Israëlische leger.

If this really was to have been Pep Guardiola’s 24th and final Wembley appearance as the Manchester City manager, then he went out in trademark fashion – as a winner, as an overseer of magic moments. There was actually only one of the latter here, but it will stand the test of time, Antoine Semenyo lighting up an FA Cup final that had previously been heavy on perspiration rather than inspiration.

The Wembley clock showed 72 minutes and, at that point, it was a Chelsea team desperate to put their recent woes behind them who were in the ascendancy. Was Calum McFarlane, their red-raw rookie caretaker coach, about to produce the sling-shot to fell Guardiola? Were the unhappy Chelsea supporters about to get something to save their season?

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