The Guardian

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

A humanoid traffic officer and Pride in Brazil: photos of the day – Monday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Continue reading...

How much does Sean Penn hate selfies? Enough to invoke the Holocaust

In his own unique words, the One Battle After Another actor made it clear there is no one he won’t reject for a fan photo – and revealed the real reason he skipped the Oscars

One of the highlights of this year’s Oscars was Sean Penn’s win for best supporting actor. Not because he deserved it – although in truth he probably did – but because he didn’t turn up, which simultaneously made the ceremony a little bit shorter and spared the world a Sean Penn acceptance speech.

At the time, much was made about the reason for Penn’s absence. Since he spent Oscars night in Ukraine, the leading theory was that he was making a profound point about the frivolity of backslapping awards shows during times of tangible crisis. Turns out that isn’t quite the case, though. Sean Penn skipped the Oscars because he hates selfies. We’ll get to the exact quote in a minute, and you should probably brace yourself for it, but he really, really hates selfies. A lot.

Continue reading...

Bayern’s best ever? Kane in Ballon d’Or conversation but World Cup is pivotal

The England captain has finally assumed his place at the pinnacle of the game – it has been a long road to this point

The Bayern Munich president, Uli Hoeness, has a propensity for hyperbole, so when he labelled Harry Kane as the best transfer the club has ever made in the wake of the DFB-Pokal cup final, which Bayern won 3-0 thanks to a Kane hat-trick, you wondered whether he was simply dialling up the rhetoric. A month on, emotion subsided, it appears not. “He absolutely is the best we’ve had,” another Bayern insider confirms.

It’s impossible to overstate the unfussy way Kane has won over not just Bayern Munich but, perhaps, global football opinion. Kane’s travails through Euro 2024, when he still had yet to win a trophy, suggested a player on the downslide. Combined with the scepticism that met his Golden Boot at Russia 2018 among foreign observers – “top goalscorer despite not having scored from the quarter-finals on,” sniffed Le Journal du Dimanche – indicated that his six most productive years as a pro might have been regarded a tireless yet vain effort.

Continue reading...

VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Amerikaanse tabaksfabrikant ziet handel in Nederlandse wiet, tot schrik van verslavingsexperts

‘Neobank’ Revolut heeft nu ook in Nederland volledig digitale telefoonabonnementen in de aabieding

‘Neobank’ Revolut heeft nu ook in Nederland volledig digitale telefoonabonnementen in de aanbieding

Stanley Tucci die het gelukkigst is als hij samen met zijn gezin eet: wat een mensch

In ‘Carrousel’, over vier generaties uit een Surinaamse familie, schippert Vis à Vis tussen spektakel en ontroering

Vuur, hijskranen, lichteffecten, stunts: theatergezelschap Vis à Vis levert visueel spektakel in de Carrousel, over een kermisfamilie met Surinaamse wortels. Maar het moment dat het meest beklijft is een ingetogen, poëtisch beeld.

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Python JIT compiler project under threat after steering council says proper process wasn't followed

The Python steering council has surprised onlookers by asking for the suspension of new development on the JIT (just in time) compiler project from the main branch of the Python code repository, pending creation and acceptance of a new PEP (Python enhancement proposal) for the project. Bug and security fixes for existing JIT code in main will continue to be accepted, but if no PEP is submitted and approved within six months, the JIT code will be removed from main. The announcement is unexpected because an improved JIT compiler is one of the key features of Python 3.15, for which features are frozen, and for which full release is expected in October. The release notes promise "8-9 percent geometric mean performance improvement" over the standard CPython interpreter on x86-64 Linux. That said, the JIT compiler is experimental and disabled by default; use requires setting PYTHON_JIT=1 as an environmental variable. The implication of the steering council statement is that the experimental JIT compiler should not have been merged into main, on the grounds that PEP 744, which relates to the JIT, is only informational and contains open questions. "We (the Steering Council) have not been as strict about following the process as a change of this complexity and reach deserves," states the post from council member Pablo Galindo Salgado. These open questions include future maintenance of the JIT, compatibility with existing CPython features and tooling, clear and measurable success metrics, and relationship to third-party JIT compilers. Key JIT contributor Mark Shannon said "stopping all development until a PEP is accepted puts us in an awkward position," because it puts pressure on the JIT team to produce a new PEP quickly, but doing so will not give the community time to discuss it. He said a new PEP was already planned for "later this year when the performance advantage would be larger." Shannon has asked for a grace period of "a month or two" to continue work. He said "a moratorium risks loss of momentum and losing the new contributors we have recently gained." Asked whether development could continue in a fork, Shannon said it was not easy due to the way optimizations are generated, leading to very large code differences that are hard to manage. The impact of the steering council’s JIT statement is that the future of the project is now in doubt, whereas before it looked likely to become part of CPython. Six months is not long for creating a PEP and having it agreed; and if in fact the JIT code is removed from the main branch the project is likely to lose momentum. Salgado said "the intent is not to call for competing proposals" but nevertheless raised the possibility of shifting towards "a JIT infrastructure that can support multiple implementation strategies," and implied the steering council would prefer an infrastructure that is not "highly coupled with a single strategy." The announcement appears to have come as a surprise to Shannon and others suggesting a lack of communication between the steering council and the JIT project team. Another steering council member, Donghee Na, said "the current experimental JIT project needs an official PEP" and "this would be a good time to review the different possible approaches." Fast-track approval of a new PEP will be hard to achieve alongside the lengthy likely discussion of different approaches. Both Galindo and steering council member Thomas Wouters said there is some flexibility around the six-month deadline. "We’re not unreasonable," said Wouters, "but we do want this to be taken seriously."®

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Libanees archeologisch complex beschadigd door Israëlische aanval

TYRUS (ANP/AFP) - Een Israëlisch bombardement op de Zuid-Libanese stad Tyrus heeft een archeologisch complex beschadigd, meldt het Libanese ministerie van Cultuur. De ruïnes, die uit de Romeinse tijd stammen, staan op de werelderfgoedlijst van UNESCO.

Israël heeft de laatste weken veel luchtaanvallen uitgevoerd op Tyrus, een kuststad op zo'n 20 kilometer van de grens met Israël. Ook zondag werd de stad bestookt, inclusief het gebied waar de opgravingen liggen. Volgens het Libanese ministerie van Cultuur is de schade groot, vooral door brokstukken van bombardementen die in de buurt neerkwamen.

In Libanon geldt sinds half april een staakt-het-vuren, maar toch blijft Israël bombarderen. De Libanese premier Nawaf Salam zei maandag dat Israël sindsdien 3500 luchtaanvallen heeft uitgevoerd, met name op het zuiden van het land. Daarbij zijn honderden mensen gedood. Volgens Israël zijn de militaire acties gericht tegen Hezbollah, dat het bestand ook zou schenden.