"Japan's experimental reusable rocket took off and safely landed in a first test flight Saturday," reports the Associated Press, as Japan "seeks to achieve the technology key to cut launch costs and compete in the global space market dominated by SpaceX."


The RV-X rocket lifted off, hovered and moved horizontally before landing [watch the video here] during its less than one-minute flight at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Noshiro Testing Center in northeastern Japan, which was livestreamed by the NVS, a group of space fans...
Saturday's flight is a step forward for Japan in achieving the technology needed to develop a lower cost successor to the country's current mainstay, single-use H3 series.

Japan's test comes the same week that China recovered an orbital booster rocket for the first time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America "is facing what's projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history," according to experts interviewed by the Washington Post:



Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech. It "could hobble the American economy for years to come," predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it "the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen." JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from "a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation's capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests." There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction worker and airplane mechanics — jobs AI generally can't do...

Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. "We have pumped so many young people into business and finance" when what's really in demand are graduates in other fields, [said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast's principal economist]. "It's like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, 'We really don't need them.' And the factory just keeps pumping them out." But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. A protracted decline in birth rates is coinciding with a record wave of retirements, data shows.

From 2024 to 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security payments, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor's degrees falls, the number of jobs requiring them will grow, the center forecasts. That will leave a gap of 4.6 million workers. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million... The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college, a sharply reduced rate of immigration, and a growing number of Americans leaving the workforce altogether because of such issues as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction, according to the Chamber of Commerce.


Three interesting statistics from the article:

U.S. college/university enrollment in 2023 was down by nearly 2 million students since its peak in 2010, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Education Department.
America's low birth rate since 2010 "means the number of college-age Americans is forecast to decline by another 13 percent through 2041."
South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs... while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the Chamber of Commerce found.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

En dan schakelen we nu over naar de rechtbank van Alkmaar waar Super Mario voor de rechter moet verschijnen voor de moord op ABN AMRO-medewerkster Karin (al heeft Saskia Belleman het over 'Carin'). Adil Qoraich is een 'Italiaanse' arbeidsmigrant die bij Schiphol een lappie over de vliegtuigen haalde, en in Nederland al vaker in aanraking was gekomen met de politie: voor een winkeldiefstal en voor een mishandeling in een hostel in Amsterdam. Adil heeft tot nu toe nog niet verteld waarom Karin precies dood moest, mogelijk trekt-ie nu voor het eerst z'n bek open. In het Italiaans, natuurlijk. Sas is erbij! Later meer.
Update - Karin (tot we het zeker weten houden we het even op Karin met een K) was bij ABN AMRO trouwens de persoonlijke assistente van Leonie, die op dezelfde dag werd vermoord in Amsterdam. Dat lijkt te berusten op puur toeval
Update - Belleman: "Ze had 2 steekletsels en meerdere snijletsels. De eerste steek doorkliefde de halsslagader. Ook had ze talrijke ribbreuken en waren er sporen van verwurging te zien."
Update - Adil had in februari 2026 VERPLICHT opgenomen moeten worden in een psychiatrische instelling in Italië. Maar toen was hij dus niet meer in Italië... maar in (of op weg naar) Nederland. En dan kun je blijkbaar je goddelijke gang gaan
Update - Adil (die knettergek is) wil niet onderzocht worden in het Pieter Baan Centrum en hij 'accepteert geen tbs'
Update - Adil MOET naar het PBC. Ook als hij niet wil
Update - Adil gedraagt zich echt als een zak stront. Wat een nachtmerrie voor de nabestaanden

In België mag je vanaf je zestiende zuipen en dus trekken Mees en Lucas en Bikkel en Sterfons en Glalbert en Zonne (?) naar Knokke om zichzelf daar eens lekker te verzuipen in vaten Stella Artois (hier heel duur trouwens). De Telegraaf maakt daarvan: "Feestende Nederlandse jongeren bezorgen Knokke zoveel overlast dat onze politie moet ingrijpen." Wat lollig is want ónze kust wordt gesloopt door Marokkaanse jongeren die we heel krampachtig 'jongeren met een bepaald accent' noemen, of nog mooier 'heetgebakerde jongeren die zich vervelen'. In België zijn het natuurlijk wél gewoon Nederlandse jongeren, oer-Hollandse poldervogels, al hebben Belgische media het dan weer op 'Noord-Franse jongeren', maar kleinigheidjes hou je toch.

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Soms staan precies de verkeerde ramen op en zit alles zo tegen dat het net lijkt alsof je naar een Raptor engine zit te kijken. Het hellevuur brak uit in district Lat Phrao in het noorden van Bangkok, en volgens hulpdiensten zijn er tot nu toe "minstens 27 doden", volgens autoriteiten 18 vrouwen en 9 mannen. Altijd pijnlijk om dit soort verslagen te lezen: "Toen de brandweer aankwam, zaten nog veel mensen in het gebouw. Het vuur had zich al over de hele locatie verspreid, aldus de woordvoerder. (...) Veel slachtoffers zijn volgens Thaise media aangetroffen in de toiletten, waar zij vermoedelijk hun toevlucht zochten." Meer beeld onderstaand.

Brandende mensen ontnappen uit café

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Toestand

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Microsoft and backup are two words often uttered together, usually in the form of "Microsoft Windows has crashed again, where's my backup?" The question is: what would a backup look like for a digital sign in Derby? Spotted by eagle-eyed Register reader "nategee" on a stroll in Derby, this sign appears to have spent much of the day pleading to be backed up. This poses an interesting question. What, exactly, would constitute a backup for a sign? Microsoft would obviously like somebody to log in with a Microsoft account so the data on the computer behind the scenes can be squirted into its cloud. However, we'd contend that a more appropriate backup for a digital sign would involve glue, paper, and a person on a ladder, wielding a brush. Although the words "if anything gets my back up" is often muttered by Windows users faced with yet another surprise update or unexpected screen of blue, the backup suggestion usually pops up when Windows restarts after an update. Microsoft has examined the user's device and tightly clutched its pearls upon realizing that the PC isn't backed up. And now would be the perfect time to back it up by signing in with a Microsoft account, at least as far as the tech giant is concerned. The owners of the billboard might disagree. Sadly, there is nowhere obvious for a technically minded passer-by to attach a keyboard and mouse to let the sign continue the startup process, and the hard-pressed techie responsible, doubtless sitting behind a desk at the mothership, has yet to give a remote command to unbork the signage. Digital signage might be flexible, but we doubt Microsoft is advertising backups here - or reminding everyone that Windows has a habit of nagging users into doing what Redmond thinks is best for them. Perhaps it's best to back up to something that doesn't involve Microsoft's OS, or maybe even save the power, dust off the poster poster and glue pot. No tech required. ®

It is just over a year since a pilot project to install photovoltaics on a railway line kicked off. According to the CEO of Sun-Ways, the company behind the scheme, the challenge was not so much technical as regulatory. The project, a 100-meter photovoltaic installation on a railway line open to traffic, was inaugurated on April 24, 2025 in Buttes, Switzerland. It's fair to say it went well; the 48 solar panels wedged between the tracks have generated more than 19 MWh to date. According to the company's CEO, Joseph Scuderi, more than 11,000 trains have passed over the solar power plant without incident. There has been no impact on railway operations or solar generation. It's a novel idea – use the space between rails for solar power generation. While the angle of the panels might not be ideal, the losses would be relatively minor compared to the potential gains. In Switzerland alone, Sun-Ways reckons there is a potential 1 TWh available, enough to meet 30 percent of the country's public transport needs. The panels themselves use anti-reflection material to avoid distracting train drivers with glare, and are resistant to micro-cracks, which could lead to a higher risk of fires. And then there is the installation itself, which required coming up with a rail-mounted machine to deploy the panels. According to Scuderi, the company now has a machine capable of installing up to 300 solar panels per hour, over hundreds of kilometers, rather than the 100 meters of the pilot. However, as Scuderi told The Register, "Technology wasn't the problem. "After all, we're capable of sending people to the Moon… "The real challenge is regulation. The strictest safety requirements apply in the rail sector. It took us years to obtain authorization to test our Sun-Ways solar power plant on a line open to passenger trains." According to a report published in April by the European Environment Agency, renewables (including solar) accounted for 25.2 percent of final energy consumption in the European Union. In the past year, renewables have accounted for 43.3 percent of generation in the UK, according to the National Grid (the UK's power transmission network), with 6.9 percent coming from solar. The EU's minimum target is 42.5 percent from renewables by 2030, so sticking solar panels on the space between the rails carries a certain appeal. Scuderi told us that agreements had been made with Italy and France's SNCF, and that talks were underway with South Korea, Spain, and Portugal. He said, "I envisage a market launch as early as 2028, with the deployment of small Sun-Ways power plants of 10 km (10,000 m2), then an increase in capacity to reach 1000 km installed by 2035 and 10,000 km in 2040." It's an ambitious plan, and might have seemed the stuff of fiction when Sun-Ways was founded in the early 2020s. Maintaining the panels, track (and track bed), and keeping the units clean enough to generate a worthwhile amount of power were obvious concerns, but the project has shown that these technical challenges can be overcome. Indeed, equipment capable of installing 300 panels per hour beats the rate at which canopies and station buildings could be plastered with photovoltaics. That said, panels away from the line don't share the same concerns about impacts from rail traffic or the inconvenience of track maintenance. Scuderi told The Register, "The financial projection we have made show a LCOE [Levelized Cost of Energy] from 0.05 €/kWh to 0.09 €/kWh, depending on the amount of sunlight (southern or northern Europe)." "And for a customer such as a railroad company," he added, "the LCOE corresponds to the final cost of electricity, since it is not subject to taxes or fees on the public grid, as solar energy is fed directly into the traction grid." It is hard not to remember the initial excitement that surrounded solar roadways a decade ago, which unraveled as realities such as the weight of traffic and maintenance requirements struck home. Solar railways, however, appear to be a success thus far, with the panels requiring little maintenance and producing the expected power. The next challenge is scaling it up. ®

OPINION In Disney movies, if you wish really, really hard for what you want, it happens. In British courts, not so much. Prince Redmondia really, really wanted to stop the evil barons from reselling on-prem Office and Windows licenses, and made a fairy tale argument in court to make it so. Our hero did not get its wish, not then, and not now with the UK Court of Appeals. The traditional reason companies dislike reseller markets is the obvious one that they don’t get any revenue. The law, however, has an even more traditional take on this: that once you’ve bought something you can do what you like with it. Is this true for software licenses? In Europe, explicitly yes. So Microsoft made the novel argument that its Office's suite's icons and help files made it a creative work that deserved copyright protection. For veterans of the Great Wars Of Software IP, this is arrant nonsense that should be jolly well tossed, and tossed it jolly well has been. This is especially bad news for Microsoft. Not only does the reseller market continue, but the company could be on the hook for billions in damages over its efforts to date to shut things down. By itself, this is bad enough. But wait, there’s more. Microsoft, like any modern blue-blooded software company, would much rather rent you its software than sell it to you. As anyone with the integer math skills of a seven-year-old can tell you, this is a bad deal. Thus, on-premises systems have to die off for this to work, but the sector is alive and well, and Microsoft is stuck with a valuable friend. It can't walk away. This could turn out very badly indeed, due to one of the lost battles of those software wars. That lost IBM, at the peak of its powers, the IBM PC market it had itself invented. Forty years on, it could do the same for on-prem Microsoft. The IP wars were all about what legal protection the law gave software companies. Could the look and feel of software be copyrighted? No. How about programming interfaces? No again, not by copyright or patents. Actual software, as source code or binaries, was copyright and couldn’t be used without permission — which makes Microsoft's claim that text files and clip art confer extra protection so ridiculous. A lot of this was already accepted in 1981, when IBM launched its PC. The hardware was easy to legally clone, it was barely more than Intel data sheets made flesh. The built-in BIOS chip with the software which linked that hardware to software, was safely copyrighted. IBM even published the source code, knowing that anyone who used even a tiny part of it would meet death by a thousand leathery-winged lawyers. The market swiftly rejected anything other than 100 percent IBM compatibility. Job done. It took start-up Compaq a year to blow that assumption apart. Get a team of programmers to affirm they’d only seen the BIOS interface, not the source, and get them to implement the interface in entirely new code. 100 percent compatibility. Zero liability. Just like that, IBM lost control of its own invention. Compatibility is the primary reason people stick with Windows and Office. The UI, behavior, feature set, and file format fidelity matter a lot more than raw function. As every Reg reader knows, there are fantastic FOSS answers for office productivity, ones that obliviate license fees, yet practically nobody wants to know. If only Windows and Office could be cloned with the same degree of fidelity as that PC BIOS. That BIOS was an 8K binary built from around seven thousand lines of 8086 assembler. The whole listing was an appendix in a ring bound manual. Office and Windows, well, who knows. As much as 200 million lines of code and multiple GB of binary. That’s a lot of ring binders. The sheer heft of the monster and the army of data warriors tending to it made it unassailable, and the Redmond tax inescapable. Until now. Any sufficiently advanced AI coder is indistinguishable from open sourcery. Set it loose on a product and ask it to duplicate and test. It would be expensive, and we’re probably not there yet. Once done, though, you have a whole new code base that will plug into an MS-powered organization like a clone BIOS into a motherboard. As with the PC market, you could go beyond compatibility and introduce features that people actually want. It’s not that the sums add up, or that the LLM coding models can demonstrably do this yet. It’s that what was once so clearly impossible it wasn’t worth thinking about is now within the realms of possibility. If someone bet you of a crate of decent malt whisky that this could happen in two years' time, would you take it? Two years ago, who wouldn’t. Now you have to think about it. Now think how big the stakes are for Microsoft. One of the few things finer on the tongue than a fine Islay scotch is the irony of a company using AI like a chainsaw chopping its own legs off. Prince Redmondia, be careful what you wish for. ®

AI discussions have moved past which model to run or which use case to tackle first. Enterprises developing their own private AI now face a more consequential question: where that AI should live. Drifting into public cloud because it feels familiar or delivers quick wins, without asking whether the environment meets AI's specific demands, tends to store up problems that compound with time. AI is not a transient workload. It is persistent, data-hungry, and deeply sensitive, drawing on proprietary information and embedding itself in critical workflows. AI depends on an organization's most valuable data to operate effectively, so control, privacy, and security cannot be treated as secondary considerations. Business systems and intelligence are best safeguarded in an environment the organization owns and governs. Enterprises building AI programs to improve business operations are making that choice, opting for private cloud infrastructure they can architect and evolve on their own terms. They are building AI a home, not checking it into a hotel. Why AI is different from other cloud workloads Most cloud workloads are reasonably portable and can be scaled, moved, or switched off without much consequence. Public cloud suits those portable workloads well, but AI is different. The days of AI serving one-time data analysis and decision support are over ; it now operates as a data-intensive workload driving performance, with security directly linked to where data resides. A well-functioning AI program improves through use, drawing on proprietary data and embedding itself in business processes. That creates real dependencies: on where the data lives, who has access to it, how the model is governed, and how the environment evolves. As Oliver Rowell, solution architect at Xtravirt, notes, the data sovereignty question organizations need to ask themselves is "who has the keys to your data?" Get the infrastructure wrong and the consequences compound. The more deeply AI embeds itself in workflows, the harder and more expensive it becomes to untangle governance issues, address spiraling costs, or move workloads to a more suitable environment. AI needs more than borrowed space As enterprise AI moves from pilot to production, organizations are rethinking where those workloads should run. Broadcom's Private Cloud Outlook 2026 found that 56 percent of enterprises are running or planning to run production AI inferencing in private cloud environments, while public cloud usage for the same workloads has fallen from 56 percent to 41 percent in a single year. The shift reflects a growing recognition that AI places different demands on infrastructure. Public cloud helped accelerate the first wave of AI experimentation, but production AI demands more compute power alongside low-latency connectivity, and generates sensitive data flows and new governance requirements that call for greater control over the environment in which it runs. Data sovereignty remains a central consideration for businesses handling sensitive information. Even when data is stored locally, foreign legal jurisdictions may retain access rights through the cloud provider, which is why organizations are placing greater value on ownership, predictability, and control. As Will Rodbard, master architect at Broadcom, explains: "As soon as you give parts of control away, somebody else has the encryption keys or access to the data, and you lose overall control. You can only control cost if you are in charge and in control over who can do what and when." For organizations running business-critical AI workloads, the benefits of full control extend beyond security and governance. Full control also provides greater visibility into how resources are consumed, which helps create a more predictable cost model as AI adoption scales. The closer AI sits to the systems, data, and policies that govern the business, the easier it becomes to manage risk, maintain compliance, and control long-term operational costs. Building a home for AI Building a home for AI does not mean abandoning cloud strategies; it means applying cloud principles in an environment designed around the organization's requirements. Private cloud, whether in an internal datacenter, a co-location facility, or a managed service provider environment, gives greater influence over how infrastructure is designed, how data is governed, and how AI services evolve over time. Platforms like VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) make this practical. Automation, self-service provisioning, and policy-driven governance deliver the agility organizations expect from cloud, while retaining visibility and control over the infrastructure underpinning critical AI workloads. Private cloud also creates room for change. AI strategies, models, and use cases will continue to evolve rapidly over the coming years, and the organizations primed for private AI success will be those that build a flexible foundation capable of adapting as requirements shift. Where private AI creates real value The most effective deployments rarely begin with ambition; they begin with a clearly defined problem. "Those companies really succeeding with AI" says Rowell, "are those that identify an actual use case and nail that use case down." One clear starting point is documentation and knowledge search*.* Most organizations sit on vast stores of data that are fragmented across different systems and formats, which makes access difficult. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) offers a useful solution: it is a practical way to unlock internal insights, delivering contextual answers from existing documentation without data leaving the environment. Xtravirt has driven rapid returns through RAG deployments for clients running on VCF. A second strong use case is secure coding environments. Development teams in regulated or air-gapped settings need AI-assisted coding support that stays within the perimeter. Private AI delivers the productivity benefits of AI-assisted development without the compliance risk of routing proprietary code through a public endpoint. The competitive case for acting now Much of the conversation around AI is driven by the fear of being left behind, and the gap between organizations that get their infrastructure right and those that do not will widen quickly. As Rodbard explains: "If you've got two businesses doing roughly the same thing and one has orchestrated and automated a lot of their business processes while another is still using manual labour, they're not going to be as reactive, not going to be as fast, not going to keep pace." IT teams have spent years being asked to do more with less. Private AI is one of the clearest opportunities to deliver on that promise, freeing people from high-volume, repetitive work so they can focus on what moves the business forward. Organizations that apply AI to practical business challenges can respond faster to change, make better use of existing resources, and create capacity for higher-value work. What to do next As AI moves into production, infrastructure becomes a strategic decision. The environment organizations choose today will shape AI's performance, governance, and resilience. Enterprises should assess where AI workloads should run, including the suitability of private cloud, the data they rely on, and whether the chosen environment supports long-term business goals. Working with an experienced partner such as Xtravirt can help organizations identify the environment best suited to their AI ambitions and operational requirements. From AI readiness assessments and cloud strategy development through to deployment, governance, and ongoing optimization, Xtravirt supports enterprises at every stage of AI adoption. Whatever an organization's starting point, the most important step is understanding where AI can create genuine business value and then building the right foundation to support it. AI needs a home, not a hotel. Visit xtravirt.com/own-your-cloud to explore the Own Your Cloud hub or get in touch to discuss where your AI program should call home. Contributed by Xtravirt.

mikeleonardvisualarts posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Geen tourist traps of overvolle musea, maar verborgen parels en rafelranden: in deze zomerserie tonen NRC-correspondenten minder bekende cultuurlocaties in grote Europese cultuursteden. Aflevering 2: Rome.

Wat doet het met je mensbeeld als je zestien jaar lang verslag doet van de gruwelijkste rechtszaken? „Het vernisje van de beschaving is best wel dun”, zegt rechtbankverslaggever Saskia Belleman.

De uiterst-rechtse partijen JA21, FVD, BBB, Groep Markuszower en Mona Keijzer dienden een voorstel in om de spreidingswet in te trekken. In een advies dat op maandag gepubliceerd werd laat de Raad van State weten ‘ernstige bezwaren’ tegen de intrekking te hebben.

Voor de eerstejaarsstudenten van ROC Albeda is een van de belangrijkste onderdelen van hun studie aangebroken: de stage. Meestal zonder vergoeding, want kleine werkgevers zien het zo: „Als jij weggaat, heb ik jou iets van waarde gegeven: kennis.”

Jongeren zijn in tien jaar tijd anders naar geld gaan kijken, zegt docent burgerschap Merve Kilic. Ze kopen op afbetaling en laten zich, soms, verleiden door influencers. „Ik hoor vaker dan vroeger: ik wil snel geld verdienen.”

‘Ik dacht je dood was’

Het was een emotioneel afscheid toen de Soldaat van Oranje zestien jaar geleden afscheid nam van zijn vrouw en twee jonge kinderen. Hij wist niet hoe lang het allemaal zou gaan duren, dat weet je nooit bij een oorlogsmusical, maar ze beloofden elkaar eeuwige trouw. Ze zouden op elkaar wachten en als het allemaal achter de rug was zouden ze een prachtig gezinsleven samen opbouwen. Met een rugzak die aan zijn schouders bungelt vertrok hij naar de Hangaar in Katwijk aan Zee, waar hij op uitzending ging. Nog een laatste keer zwaaien, een traan die over een wang rolt.

Zestien jaar later houdt niemand meer voor mogelijk dat hij nog in leven is. Er wordt over hem gepraat in het dorp, in de verleden tijd wel te verstaan. “Het was zo’n goede jongen.” “Ja dat was-ie.” “Leuke vader ook.” “Ja dat was-ie.” En toch staat hij daar plots voor de deur van zijn voormalige huis. Hij belt aan bij een andere deurbel dan hij gewend is. Ook het melodietje is anders. In zijn herinnering was de voordeur donkerblauw. De pijn, de vermoeidheid, de mentale schade van zestien jaar Soldaat van Oranje flitsen aan hem voorbij. De deur gaat open en daar staat ze: inderdaad wat ouder geworden, ze heeft haar haar gekleurd. Het duurt een paar seconden voor ze door heeft dat hij het is.

“Ik dacht dat je dood was”, stamelt ze in plaats van “hoi”. Het is niet de ontvangst waar hij op gehoopt had. Hij spreidt zijn armen. “Wie is er aan de deur?” klinkt een mannenstem uit de woonkamer die ooit van hem was. De vrouw in de deuropening kijkt betrapt. “Ik, ik, ik… ik moest verder, sorry”, zegt ze nog steeds stamelend.

Hij laat zijn schouders zakken. Een gespierde man met een gouden oorbelletje komt door de hal aangelopen en gaat achter de vrouw staan. De vrouw die de Soldaat van Oranje nog als zijn vrouw beschouwt. Hij legt een hand op haar schouder en een hand op haar heup. “We kopen niet aan de deur”, zegt hij ferm tegen de soldaat. Voor hij iets kan zeggen slaat de deur weer dicht.

Een musical kan heel veel leed veroorzaken. De diepe wonden die Soldaat van Oranje heeft nagelaten worden vandaag bij gezinnen thuis gevoeld.

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Beloved actor Sam Neill has died, aged 78. Born in Ireland, the New Zealand actor was an honorary Aussie and called Australia his home for many decades.

Neill's talent saw him play a diverse range of roles - hero to villain - in an equally diverse range of films, including international blockbusters like Jurassic Park and indie films like Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Neill also starred in many small screen productions on television and the unforgettable Cinema Quarantine with gems such as Das Bad with Hugo Weaving and Das Bogroll with David Wenham. He was knighted in 2023 in recognition of his "outstanding contribution to film". Neill was also a vintner and a farmer, posting about his menagerie of animals including chickens Nicole Kidman, Magda Szubanski and Helena Bonham Carter — and his favourite duck, Charlie Pickering. Tributes are flowing, and Magda Szubanski (the human, not the chicken) perhaps sums it up best: "[H]e's just a one-off, such a talented, classy, beautiful, wry, warm human being. [A] really lovely man, and I'm just very sad for all who loved him and there are so many of us."

'No matter how bad, it is always fixable': how Bea Elton cleans up the houses – and lives – of desperate people. Emily Retter interviews Bea Elton, cleaner of extreme situations, in the Guardian. Elton's YouTube and Instagram.