T.Marko has added a photo to the pool:

A small street-side eatery glows against the darkness, offering warmth, routine, and quiet refuge. Beneath a bright sign and handwritten menu, two figures exist in parallel solitude—one absorbed in his meal, the other leaning into the counter, caught in a moment of pause. The scene unfolds like a still frame from a film, where nothing dramatic happens, yet everything is felt: the contrast of light and shadow, presence and absence, movement and stillness. A fleeting glimpse into the quiet rhythm of the night.

Storm rising, Franz Sedlacek

June gloom, Ted Engelbart

Cloudflare on Monday said that it has joined with the three leading commercial browser makers to create a privacy-preserving protocol that websites can use to separate desirable web traffic from undesirable network requests. Cloudflare, along with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox, have committed to develop Private Access Control Tokens (PACTs), a way for websites to generate a digital token that asserts a given browsing session is being run by a human or bot with legitimate intent, as opposed to network requests from people or software deemed abusive or improper. PACTs will let websites "with strong knowledge of 'personhood'" issue anonymous tokens that browser users and designated bots can present at other websites, so that fewer identity checks are necessary. Think of PACTs as a shareable, privacy-preserving CAPTCHA test result, where the desirability of the web traffic is being tested rather than whether the visitor is a human or bot – an increasingly difficult distinction. While the technical details are still being hammered out and harmonized between related proposals, it isn't immediately clear what constitutes "strong knowledge of 'personhood'" in this context, particularly since "personhood" appears to extend to software that has been authorized to act on behalf of a legitimate person for an authorized purpose. It may be that the test criteria puts certain browsers, behaviors, or network signals at greater risk of being denied the dispensation of a PACT, though past technical discussion by developers from Google and Mozilla suggests that excluding certain hardware, platforms, or user-agents is not a goal. Dane Knecht, CTO of Cloudflare, argues that the way people interact with the web is changing and increasingly may involve autonomous agents. "As AI-powered traffic becomes widespread, existing tools to support its use are too generic and coarse," said Knecht in a statement. "Now this collaboration lets us eliminate the friction caused by security protocols for every visitor – whether they are human or agent – without sacrificing privacy." The claim "without sacrificing privacy" is a bit of an overstatement. PACT tokens, it appears, will not contain personal details. But they won't do anything to repair all the other ways browsers can facilitate digital fingerprinting and tracking. And if implemented poorly, they may introduce novel risks. Fundamentally, they divide the internet traffic into welcome and unwelcome traffic – something already widely done through firewalls and other technical measures but not easily reconciled with the notionally open web. "Mozilla is committed to defending openness and user privacy on the web," said Bobby Holley, CTO for Firefox at Mozilla, in a statement. "An avalanche of automated traffic is pushing sites to adopt blunt defenses – paywalls, identity checks, CAPTCHAs, and invasive tracking – simply to tell whether a request comes from a human." While Cloudflare touts the privacy benefits of PACTs, it's clear from the company's announcement that the technology is designed to "empower businesses to identify genuine visitors, ensuring they can focus their resources on the traffic that matters to them." Essentially, this is an anti-fraud initiative. Many website operators have complained about the burden of handling unwanted network traffic from disrespectful crawlers. PACTs may be the answer to their prayers. At the same time, they may also become an access barrier that demands negotiation with site publishers to have one's site visits or software deemed worthy of "personhood." ®

The Cardigans

Drie Nederlanders moesten tijdens de Brexit-jaren hun weg zien te vinden in het Verenigd Koninkrijk. „Keep calm and carry on. Dat is een beetje uitgekauwd, maar wel waar”, zegt één van hen.

We must find a way to steward AI, then to live side by side with it, writes Will Marshall.

We onderbreken heel eventjes de Oranjekoorts voor andersoortige sportpret, dit wegens het besluit van het IOC om de OLUMPISCHE WINTERSPELEN van 2030 naar FRIESLAND te halen. Officieel is Frankrijk aangewezen als gastland en gebeurt het langlaufen, rodelen, freestyle-snowboarden en alle andere dingen waar Nederland slecht in is in de Alpen. Een probleem echter: die rare Fransen hebben helemaal geen schaatshal. Dus wat doe je dan als organisator? Schaatsen schrappen van het programma want ja het zijn toch alleen de Nederlanders die het serieus nemen Op zoek naar alternatieve locaties, waarna je uiteraard al snel uitkomt bij onze THIALF. Hartstikke leuk, maar we willen nu natuurlijk wel een Nederlandse vinger in de pap als het om de aankleding gaat. In het officiële logo van Alpes & Fryslân 2030 moet het achterwerk van Jutta Leerdam verwerkt worden. Vinden we leuk, zie maar hoe je het regelt. Bij de openingsceremonie geen gedoe met fetisj-smurfen en laatste avondmalen dit keer. Wij eisen een hoofdrol voor de koningin van Fryslân, Lutz Jacobi Doutzen Kroes. De muziek wordt verzorgd door Dries Roelvink en Orgel Joke. Als grote finale wordt het Olympische vuur aangestoken door een brandende pijl van Raymond van Barneveld. Nu al zin in.

The legendary music executive signed everyone from Patti Smith to Barry Manilow and changed the industry forever

• Clive Davis: music industry executive who signed Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen dies aged 94

• Clive Davis: a life in pictures from Diana Ross to Aretha Franklin

Clive Davis always claimed that his life in the music business was really kickstarted when he chose to attend the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival: it was there he saw Janis Joplin and her band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and immediately bought their contract for $200,000, the first really high-profile signing of his career. But Davis was an unlikely fit at the most high-profile event of the Summer of Love: he was a Harvard-educated lawyer who had been “shocked” when a restructuring of Columbia Records saw him promoted from general counsel to the company’s president. He was sharp enough to spot which way the pop cultural wind was blowing – “a revolution in culture and philosophy”, he later recalled, “the Haight-Ashbury scene, with love peace and flowers” – but he was no one’s idea of a hippie. Amid a sea of paisley, batik, love beads and bells David turned up to the festival clad in “khaki pants and a tennis sweater”.

It was an image he would often recall for comic effect – “I was the costumed freak surrounded by everyone with flowers in their hair” – but there was something rather telling about it too: Davis’s skill as what used to be called a record man lay in his ability to balance the progressive with the traditional. He turned one wing of Columbia into something of a home for artists associated with the burgeoning counterculture, swiftly signing Santana, Blood Sweat and Tears, the Electric Flag and the wonderful psychedelic soul band the Chambers Brothers. But he never lost sight of the other side of the company, which dealt lucratively in soundtracks and easy listening and was home to Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett: at one juncture, he found himself simultaneously attempting to renegotiate the contracts of Bob Dylan and Andy Williams. When he founded Arista Records in 1974, he did exactly the same thing: it was a label that provided a home for both Patti Smith and Barry Manilow.

Continue reading...

Bij een zebrapad op de Blaak in Rotterdam-Centrum is maandagavond een auto in botsing gekomen met een voetganger. De voetganger raakte hierbij gewond en moest naar het ziekenhuis. De automobilist reed na het ongeluk door. De politie is op zoek naar de auto, een zwarte Volkswagen Polo.