IT sector unemployment "increased to 3.8% in April from 3.6% in March," reports the Wall Street Journal.

But they add that the increase reflects "an ongoing uncertainty in tech as AI continues to play havoc with hiring. That's according to analysis from consulting firm Janco Associates, which bases its findings on data from the U.S. Labor Department."
On Friday, the department said the economy added 115,000 jobs, buoyed by gains in industries including retail, transportation and warehousing and healthcare. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3%. But the information sector lost 13,000 jobs in April.

While it's still too early to say exactly how AI is affecting employment overall, some businesses, especially in the tech industry, have said it's part of the reason they're cutting staff. In April, Meta Platforms said it would lay off 10% of its staff, or roughly 8,000 people, as it seeks to streamline operations and pay for its own massive investments in AI. Nike will reduce its workforce by roughly 1,400 workers, or about 2%, mostly in its tech department, as it simplifies global operations. And Snap is planning to eliminate 16% of its workforce, or about 1,000 positions, as it aims to boost efficiency. In other areas of IT, which includes telecommunications and data-processing, employment is now down 11%, or 342,000 jobs, from its most recent peak in November 2022.

But there's not just AI to blame. Inflation and economic uncertainty linked to the Iran conflict is giving some chief executives and tech leaders reason to pull back or pause their IT hiring, said Janco Chief Executive Victor Janulaitis.

The article even notes that postings for software developer jobs "are up 15% year-over-year on job-search platform Indeed, according to Hannah Calhoon, its vice president of AI". But employers do seem to be looking for experienced developers, which could pose a problem for recent college graduates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leo V Sky has added a photo to the pool:

Aso-Kuju National Park

Leo V Sky has added a photo to the pool:

Aso-Kuju National Park

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Sinds Assad de winter van zijn carrière beleeft in een Moskouse tandartspraktijk, zien we Syrië steeds verder opklimmen de vaart der volkerenmoord volken. Stapje voor stapje keren de Westerse geneugten des levens er terug. Onlangs zagen we voormalig terrorist en huidig president al-Sharaa al de tijd van zijn leven beleven met cheerleaders in een hypermoderne basketbaltempel. Nu heeft nieuwe bewind heeft betalingen met Visa en Mastercard goedgekeurd, dus kunnen de Syriërs hun kaartjes voor het basketbal zelfs MET EEN PASJE afrekenen. Dan doe je weer helemaal mee in de wereld. Wat is Syrië toch weer een gezellig land. Wie wil daar nou niet op vakantie? Of misschien zelfs: naar terugkeren.

HOE GING DAT OOK ALWEER

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Michael Lukyniuk has added a photo to the pool:

My second attempt at a linocut

Michael Lukyniuk has added a photo to the pool:

These are my first attempts at creating linocut prints. I've been curious about this artform for a long time and thought that I'd try it out. While the results resemble pen and ink drawings, the linocut artist has the ability to create multiple originals. Each print is made by hand and may be different from others created with the same block. For example, the prints may be produced with different colours, be made on various kinds of papers (or fabrics), or contain slight imperfections making each one unique. The linocut print is also different from a pen and ink drawing in the manner that the ink isn't absorbed into the paper but seems to stand on top of it. (At least that's what I've noticed from my attempts.) I can tell that this is a complex artform which may take a long time to create descent results.

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Gordon gets in touch: “I am wondering if the Chelsea players will give their opponents today a guard of honour after City became WSL champions?”

Let’s see, perhaps that would only happen in an actual WSL match.

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

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⚽ Premier League updates from the 4.30pm BST kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Latest table | And follow us on Bluesky

It was a soundbite designed to go viral, the kind the ex-pros in the TV studios are always looking to confect; snappy, heavy on hyperbole, bang in the moment. Thierry Henry made it pop on Tuesday night as he interviewed Bukayo Saka on CBS Sports after Arsenal had beaten Atlético Madrid to advance to the Champions League final. “We were the Invincibles. You will be the Unforgettables,” Henry said.

There it was, as laid out by one of the greats, the goalscoring hero of Arsenal’s unbeaten bolt to the 2004 Premier League title, the last one they won.

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The economic warnings are bleak, but full extent of shortages are still not felt for many European countries

The biggest energy shock in modern history, jet fuel shortages “within weeks”, a global recession – since Iran throttled shipping flows through the strait of Hormuz at the end of February the economic warnings have become increasingly dire.

Yet 10 weeks on from the first US-Israeli attacks, share indices, companies and governments have been surprisingly sanguine. Every day the divergence grows between the eerie quiet on markets and alarming warnings of an imminent supply chain crunch.

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Tegen het einde van de route werd het meisje onwel. Reanimatie ter plekke mocht niet baten. De afstanden van de Leiden Marathon die nog van start zouden gaan, zijn geannuleerd.

De evacuatie van zo’n 150 opvarenden van het cruiseschip MV Hondius, dat is getroffen door een uitbraak van het hantavirus, is begonnen op Tenerife. Het is een ingewikkelde logistieke operatie, waarbij veel landen betrokken zijn. De eerste Nederlandse reizigers worden zondagavond verwacht op vliegveld Eindhoven.

MADRID (ANP/AFP) - De veertien Spanjaarden die zich bevonden op het Nederlandse cruiseschip Hondius, dat werd getroffen door het hantavirus, zijn aangekomen in Madrid. De groep werd zondag als eerste geëvacueerd van het cruiseschip dat bij Tenerife voor anker ligt.

Het gaat om dertien passagiers en een bemanningslid. De groep is aangekomen op de luchtmachtbasis van Torrejón en gaat in quarantaine in een militair ziekenhuis in Madrid.

De evacuatie van de opvarenden is een flinke klus, waarbij meer dan 23 landen betrokken zijn. Omdat het cruiseschip onder de Nederlandse vlag vaart, heeft het land een grotere rol bij de operatie. Het cruiseschip vaart als vrijwel iedereen van boord is naar Rotterdam, waar het schip wordt schoongemaakt.

VARNA (ANP) - Turnster Floor Slooff (19) heeft bij de World Challenge Cup in het Bulgaarse Varna brons gegrepen in de finale op het onderdeel vloer. De turnster uit Driehuis behaalde een score van 12,800 punten en hoefde daarmee alleen de Britse turnsters Shantae-Eve Asiedua Amankwhaah (13,233) en Grace Davies (12,966) voor zich te dulden.

In de finale op balk kwam Slooff met 12,366 punten niet verder dan de vierde plaats. Slooff, die zich vrijdag nog als tweede voor de balkfinale had geplaatst, kwam ten val bij haar opsprong en verspeelde daarmee al een vol punt. Het goud op balk ging uiteindelijk naar de Poolse Maria Drobniak (12,866).

Slooff won in 2023 ook al eens brons op vloer bij een World Challenge Cup in Osijek, Kroatië.

ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Activisten van de actiegroep Geef Tegengas zijn zondag opnieuw aan het protesteren in de haven van Rotterdam. Ook zaterdag was er een actie van de groep in het havengebied waarbij de havenspoorlijn werd geblokkeerd.

Volgens de actiegroep doen twintig activisten mee aan de actie, waarbij sinds 13.00 uur de spoorlijn is geblokkeerd. Op zaterdag duurde de de blokkade enkele uren. De demonstranten beëindigden de actie na een oproep van de gemeente om te vertrekken. Er werden geen aanhoudingen verricht.

De actiegroep blokkeerde de havenspoorlijn in het verleden al vaker. "Nederland is 24/7 bezig met het rondpompen van fossiele brandstoffen, wapens, en andere troep die de wereld naar de knoppen helpt", aldus Geef Tegengas. "Nederland doorvoerland heeft daarmee een groot aandeel in genocide, oorlogsmisdaden, mensenrechtenschendingen en de escalerende klimaatcrisis."

Beëindiging demonstratie

Een woordvoerder van Havenbedrijf Rotterdam zegt dat demonstreren "een groot goed is zolang dat veilig en vreedzaam verloopt". Het is aan de burgemeester om te besluiten de actie te beëindigen, aldus de zegsman.

Iets na 15.00 uur besloot de burgemeester van Barendrecht, Ronald Schneider, dat de demonstratie bij de spoorlijn moet stoppen. De havenspoorlijn loopt deels door Barendrecht. Schneider beval dat de demonstratie moet worden verplaatst naar de Dierensteinweg of de Achterzeedijk. Demonstranten die niet naar de oproep luisteren worden in overleg met de gemeente Rotterdam per bus naar die stad gebracht.

WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - De Amerikaanse minister van Financiën Scott Bessent gaat op bezoek in Japan en Zuid-Korea in aanloop naar de top tussen president Donald Trump en de Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing die komende week plaatsvindt.

Bessent meldde op X dat hij maandag vertrekt en dat hij dan dinsdag met de Japanse premier Sanae Takaichi zal praten in Tokio en op woensdag een ontmoeting heeft met de Chinese vicepremier He Lifeng in Seoul.

Het bezoek van Trump aan China vindt plaats op donderdag en vrijdag. Naar verwachting zal in de Chinese hoofdstad onder meer worden gepraat over de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten, Taiwan en de handelsspanningen en importheffingen tussen de twee grootste economieën van de wereld.

​Na jarenlang oefenen heeft de 29-jarige Bram vandaag het meest minimale knikje aan de straatkrantverkoper geperfectioneerd.

Het knikje bestaat uit wegkijken, telefoon pakken en dan op het allerlaatste moment een haast onzichtbaar knikje maken richting de man met de straatkrant. “Net genoeg om te laten merken dat je ‘m hebt gezien, maar ook weer niet dat je ‘m ook echt groet als mens zeg maar!”

Of de straatkrantverkoper onder de indruk is van deze minimale knik is niet duidelijk. Hij zet opnieuw een brede glimlach op voor de volgende voorbijganger die performatief naar de grond staart.

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In modern datacenters, storage can live anywhere — local to the machine, remotely accessed over the network, and/or shared between systems. The next generation of servers will treat system memory in much the same way. Systems will still have some local DDR5, but the bulk of it will be remotely accessed from what some have taken to calling the memory godbox. The ongoing DRAM shortage has created a perfect storm for the proliferation of the appliances, which not only allow for memory to be pooled, but also data stored in that memory to be shared by multiple machines simultaneously. In effect, memory becomes a fungible resource. More importantly, your next round of servers will probably support the tech, if they don't already. CXL finally has its moment to shine The technology at the heart of these memory godboxes isn’t new. Compute Express Link (CXL) has been slowly gaining traction since its introduction seven years ago. As a quick refresher, CXL defines a common, cache-coherent interface for connecting CPUs, memory, accelerators, and other peripherals. The technology comes in a couple of different flavors: CXL.mem, CXL.cache, and CXL.io, which, as a whole, have implications for disaggregated compute. Imagine a rack with a CPU node, GPU node, memory node, and storage node, which can talk to one another completely independently. That's the core idea behind CXL. CXL piggybacks off the PCIe standard, which means in theory it should be broadly compatible, but, up to this point, it's primarily been used with memory devices. The 1.0 spec opened the door to memory expansion modules, which allow you to add more memory by slotting them into a CXL-compatible PCIe slot. To the operating system — assuming you’re running Linux that is — the extra memory is largely transparent, showing up as if it were attached to another CPU socket, just one without any additional compute. The 2.0 spec, which showed up in 2020, added basic support for switching, which meant memory could be pooled and then allocated to any number of connected systems. AMD and Intel’s current crop of Epycs and Xeons already support these appliances. But while the memory can be partitioned and reallocated to different machines as needed, two machines can’t work on the same data simultaneously. Unless you were memory-constrained, the added complexity of CXL 2.0 didn’t offer much benefit over simply using higher capacity DIMMs in the first place. At least, not until memory prices went through the roof. Where things really get interesting is when the 3.0 spec arrives in AMD and Intel’s next-generation of Epycs and Xeons. In fact, from what we understand, Amazon’s Graviton5 CPUs we looked at in December already support the spec. CXL 3.0 introduces two key capabilities that make it particularly interesting for memory appliances. The first is support for larger topologies: Multiple CXL switches can be stitched together into a fabric. The second is support for memory sharing: Rather than partitioning memory into slices only accessible to one machine at a time, memory can be shared between machines. In theory this could allow two machines running the same set of workloads to use the memory closer to that of one. It’s a bit like deduplication for memory. In fact, we already do this in virtualized environments like KVM, but it now works across machines. There are security and performance implications to all of this. Thankfully in CXL 3.1 and later, the consortium introduced confidential computing capabilities into the spec, allowing for isolation where necessary. On the performance end of things, CXL 3.0 moves to PCIe 6.0 as a baseline, which provides 16 GB/s of bidirectional bandwidth per lane. Assuming 64 lanes of CXL per CPU, that works out to an additional 512 GB/s of bandwidth. So memory bandwidth shouldn’t be too much of an issue for most applications. Latency, on the other hand, is a different story. CXL-attached memory is going to add some latency. However, as we’ve previously discussed, the latency isn’t as bad as you’re probably thinking — on the order of a NUMA hop, or about 170 to 250 nanoseconds of round trip latency. Obviously, the farther the memory appliance is from the host CPU, the worse the latency is going to be. Late last year, the CXL consortium ratified the 4.0 spec, which among other things doubles the bandwidth from 16 GB/s per lane to 32 GB/s by re-basing on PCIe 7.0. However, it'll be a while before we see appliances based on the spec. Where’s my memory godbox? There are several companies developing hardware for these kinds of networked memory appliances. Panmnesia’s CXL 3.2-compatible PanSwitch is one of the most sophisticated examples. The switch features 256 lanes of connectivity for CXL memory modules, devices, or CPUs to connect, pool, or share resources. If you’re okay with memory pooling and don’t need the niceties of CXL 3.0, then there are already several memory appliances available that are compatible with the latest generation of Xeon 6 and Epyc Turin processors. Liqid’s composable memory platform, for example, can provide a pool of up to 100 TB of DDR5 to as many as 32 hosts. Meanwhile, UnifabriX Max systems provide CXL 1.1 or 2.0 connectivity to 16 or more systems with support for CXL 3.2 already in the works. We suspect that as more CXL 3.0 compatible CPUs and GPUs hit the market, more of these memory godboxes will appear. AI eats everything Don’t get too excited. While network attached memory has the potential to reduce an enterprise's infrastructure spend, those same qualities make it attractive for the very thing driving the memory shortage in the first place. AI adoption has driven demand for DRAM off the charts. In addition to the HBM used by GPUs, DDR5 is being used for key value cache offload during inference. These KV caches store model state and can chew significant amounts of memory — often more than the model itself — in multi-tenant serving scenarios. Rather than discard these caches and recompile them when the model state is restored, it’s more efficient to offload them to system memory and eventually flash storage. The problem with using flash storage is that it has a finite write endurance. After a while it wears out. Instead, CXL memory vendors are positioning the tech as a more resilient alternative. That’s bad news for enterprises looking to these memory godboxes for salvation from the RAMpocalypse. ®