alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: [I]n a new study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center in the U.S. have revealed that we can put certain tasks on autopilot in a way that enables something closer to true multitasking. Driving is the perfect example: When you take your test, your entire mental and physical energy is concentrated on executing the right combinations of movements and thoughts. After a decade behind the wheel, the brain is no longer consciously thinking everything through in great detail.

In the new study, the researchers found that after extensive practice, the brain can effectively reroute some tasks around the brain's main computing center -- like a bypass road around a city -- to reduce mental overload and improve multitasking capability. "We have another stepping stone in our understanding of how the brain learns," says neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber, senior author of the study. "The encouraging part is that you really can learn to multitask. There is actually a way to remodel your brain architecture and use other parts of your brain."

[...] "Previous studies have shown that parts of the temporal cortex can be activated by particular object categories in experienced observers -- birds, cars, even Pokemon -- but a limitation of all of those studies is that they only looked after people became experts," says psychologist Patrick Cox, first author of the study. "We measure before and after training, so we can see that extensive training essentially put a category-selective area in the temporal lobe that was not there before." The study culminated in a dual-task experiment, in which the participants were asked to identify cars and take on another challenge. The individuals whose brains had offloaded more car-sorting work to the temporal cortex did better at the second task.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Trump administration has banned newly authorized foreign-made humanoid and four-legged robots, along with power inverters, citing "unacceptable risks" to the country's national security. FCC chairman Brendan Carr said the agency was doing its part "to secure America's critical supply chains." The BBC reports: The FCC has added the items to its Covered List -- a register of goods and services that are deemed a risk to US national security. The ban applies to new foreign-produced advanced robotic devices and power inverters and does not prevent the sale or import of any existing models that had been previously authorized by the FCC.

The FCC cited concerns that the use of foreign-made inverters could allow overseas firms to turn them off, steal data, facilitate remote access and surveillance by "foreign government actors, or be otherwise exploited through a cyberattack." It added that the use of robots made outside the US could allow "malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tegen voertuigen! Want je weet het maar nooit met voertuigen rondom Pride-evenementen tegenwoordig. "De gemeente heeft betonblokken geplaatst op het Javaplein in Oost. Vanmiddag en vanavond vinden daar festiviteiten plaats vanwege de WorldPride. Een woordvoerder van burgemeester Halsema wilde niet inhoudelijk ingaan op de veiligheidsmaatregelen die daarvoor worden genomen." Weet u wie hier wel heel erg inhoudelijk op in wil gaan tegenwoordig? NIEUWSUUR! Maar goed, we blijven lekker beton stapelen tot het hele feest in de schaduw staat.

Meisje met gemiddeld Randstedelijk wereldbeeld wil ook wat zeggen (vader dader had autoriteiten helemaal niet gewaarschuwd btw)

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The Five Pillars of Islam

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Is dit uw NPO nog wel?

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Scholen die totale haat onderwijzen jegens alles wat westerse waarden genoemd mogen worden krijgen natuurlijk géén brief op de mat dat de school direct dicht kan, nee, die krijgen HERSTELOPDRACHTEN. Om bijvoorbeeld te herstellen dat om 09.00 uur sport en spel zónder meisjes op het rooster staat, om 10.00 uur een blokje gelijkheid geselen, om 11.00 uur een uurtje hoe de democratie te ontmantelen, na de pauze meteen uitvoerig antisemitisme, voor 14.00 uur de rijtjes lhbti-scheldwoorden opdreunen, waarna de dag wordt afgesloten met een gezellig haatpraatje van een haatprediker. Los van dat het tyfusscholen zijn, zijn islamitische scholen ontwrichtend en een gevaar voor de vrije samenleving. Maar volgens staatssecretaris van Onderwijs Tielen, bekend van internet, volgen in die situatie herstelopdrachten. Niet gek dus dat er dit jaar precies 0 scholen werden gesloten. Maar goed, die zijn nu tenminste hard bezig met herstelopdracht 1, schrijf 100 keer op: "Hier geen homo's slaan." Als ze het dan nog niet begrijpen 100 keer: "De gelijkheid tussen man en vrouw is een prachtige westerse waarde." En om het af te leren 150 maal: "Wij zullen nu echt echt echt stoppen met Jodenhaat."

Ondertussen, NTR-presentator, Trouw-columnist en De Correspondent auteur Karim Amghar:

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Nouja luchtig. Deze woensdag moet u het hebben van uw survival skills (of u gaat naar het strand). Het wordt namelijk warm, ten dele heet en op sommige plekken zelfs bloedje broeierig (Co de Geel) in Nederland. Om de tropische HITTE DES DOODS met temperaturen van 30 graden of erger te overleven doet u vandaag niet wat uw baas vraagt, niet wat uw man vraagt, niet wat uw vrouw vraagt, niet wat uw kinderen of ouders vragen, maar doet u lekker wat u van uzelf vraagt. Een glaasje koel water pakken ter hydratatie, de ventilator op standje woei als u een briesje blieft, het zonnescherm uit bij een ingeving van algehele verstandigheid en misschien wel naar buurtzwembad of recreatieplas als er geen jongeren zijn. En tégen de hittestress en vóór de hitte-ongelijkheid zet u uiteraard dé hittedodenvoorkomer (airco) aan. Want een koel huis is een koel hoofd is een koel hart is een koel dagje in een koel leven.

Extra koeltewensen voor Limburg, Noord-Brabant, Gelderland en Overijssel

Er zijn nog plekken!

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Microsoft’s Secure Boot has had a serious vulnerability for most of its existence.

An industry-wide standard Microsoft invented to protect Windows, and later Linux, devices from firmware infections has been trivial to bypass for 13 of its 14 years of existence. The discovery was made by researchers at security firm ESET after identifying 11 firmware images, at least one from 2013, that were known to be defective but remained signed by the software company anyway.

The images are known as shims, which were invented to extend Secure Boot to Linux devices and utility software. Using a technique simple enough to be performed by novice hackers, these old, forgotten shims can be used to completely circumvent the protection, which is embedded into the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) of the device’s motherboard. The gaffe is the result of the failure by Microsoft, which oversees the signing of shims, to revoke the publicly available images once vulnerabilities were found in them...

The World Cup may be over but a reminder of the staggering sums footballers are paid has emerged from an unexpected quarter: NetApp's latest signing to its squad of execs. Chief Product Officer Syam Nair, who succeeded Harvinder Bhela in July last year after moving from Zscaler, is being made to feel very welcome, judging by the sums involved. According to NetApp's proxy statement ahead of its annual shareholder meeting in September, Nair received total compensation of $34.27 million in the fiscal year ended April 24, despite joining in July. Nair's reported compensation included $30.68 million in stock awards, derived from a $31.85 million target equity grant described by NetApp as a "make-whole" award for equity forfeited when he left Zscaler, where he was CTO. He was also promised a $5 million signing bonus, half of which was paid during fiscal 2026 and included in the total. The second half was due after his first anniversary, with repayment provisions applying if he leaves within 24 months. As The Reg has previously pointed out, it's tough at the top for both the overpaid superstars of the beautiful game and the prima donnas who professionally kick a ball around a field. Still, unlike many football teams that are losing money, at least NetApp was in the black in fiscal 2026. The American storage biz grew revenue 5.4 percent to $6.93 billion, and operating income bounced 25 percent to $1.67 billion. Like some of its peers, NetApp's share price is riding high – up roughly 60 percent in the year to date – amid surging demand for AI-ready infrastructure. More than 1,100 AI and data preparation deals were logged in the year, with 500 coming in the final quarter. That trading performance and buoyant market sentiment flowed directly into the C-suite's coffers. The star striker – sorry for the labored football analogy; let's kick that into touch – CEO George Kurian had to make do with $22.16 million. NetApp says 95 percent of his target direct compensation is "at risk," taking the form of cash incentives and equity awards rather than guaranteed salary. Kurian's base salary of $1 million hasn't moved in years, and most of the uplift came from annual incentive payouts and long-term equity awards. The compensation committee added an "individual performance modifier" in fiscal 2026 that lets it adjust each exec's incentive payout by plus or minus 15 percent based on personal contribution, layered on top of NetApp's financial results. President Cesar Cernuda received the maximum 15 percent upward adjustment to his annual incentive payout, with NetApp citing customer wins and revenue growth. His total compensation came to $11.13 million. CFO Wissam Jabre, another relative newcomer who joined from Western Digital in March 2025, received $11.49 million, lower than the $18.26 million he received the year before when he got a "make-good" bonus of $6.56 million. Exec pay doesn't seem to be a cause of ire for NetApp investors. At the 2025 annual meeting, the advisory "say-on-pay" vote passed with roughly 94 percent support. NetApp's compensation committee cited that result as validation for keeping its pay structure largely intact this year. Still, as is typical at such events, executive compensation is among the governance items on the ballot for this year's annual shareholder meeting in September, giving NetApp investors a non-binding vote on pay at the top. If only football fans had the same rights. ®

NHS England has admitted that a data protection document inaccurately stated who could access patient information, failing to disclose that Palantir staff could view identifiable data held within part of its Federated Data Platform. The US spy-tech firm won a £330 million contract to provide the platform in 2023 after it was awarded £60 million in COVID-era contracts without competition. The system is designed to improve data sharing across the NHS in England and help tackle the backlog in patient care. In May, NHS England confirmed that Palantir staff can access identifiable patient information within the platform's National Data Integration Tenant, an arrangement that was not accurately reflected in its Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). Following a request for clarification from the National Data Guardian (NDG), an independent statutory office that advises England's health and care system, NHS England admitted the error. "We recognize that the DPIA contained an error in how it described supplier access to data so we are correcting that error, and we apologize for any confusion this has caused," the quango said in a statement. "Clarity around supplier access is crucial to our program and we will continue to work closely with the National Data Guardian, the [data protection regulator] Information Commissioner's Office and our governance groups to ensure our information is clear." In an updated report, NDG Nicola Byrne said NHS England had confirmed that some external supplier staff supporting the platform can access identifiable patient information for specific technical purposes under its direction. "NHS England states that this access is technically necessary. As an independent body not involved in the platform's operation, we are not in a position to independently verify that assessment," she said. Byrne said the intensity of interest and strength of public feeling on this issue appear to reflect not only how deeply many people care about the use of their data, and its confidentiality, but also continuing concern among some about Palantir's role in the NHS. "This topic has always been to some extent political. As such, people have a range of views. And public, professional, and media scrutiny has only increased over time. This means that accuracy and transparency must remain central priorities for the NHS FDP programme," she said. The NDG is the custodian of the Caldicott Principles, a set of rules the NHS uses to govern patient confidentiality that originated in the 1990s. Byrne said NHS England's error in failing to disclose Palantir's access to patient information "has shown how quickly confidence erodes if the 'no surprises' Principle is not upheld when it comes to who can access people's data, and why." Sam Smith, medConfidential coordinator, told The Register: "NHS England claims it was little more than a typo, but this is the result of punishing their expert staff away from speaking truth to leadership. It is another example of the culture of fear that NHS England has cultivated around the platform. Palantir is not magic, but it does require competence to lead, manage, and use." NHS England commented: "The NHS has strict policies in place for managing access to patient data, and we are committed to being transparent about its use. We have published a detailed response to the issues raised by the National Data Guardian and are implementing the recommendations in full." ®

Your brain apparently spends the night remixing reality rather than simply replaying it, according to researchers armed with AI and more than 3,700 accounts of dreams and waking life. Researchers at Italy's IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca used natural language processing (NLP) to analyze more than 3,700 reports of dreams and waking experiences from 287 adults and found dreams are neither random mental noise nor faithful replays of the day's events. Instead, the sleeping brain appears to recycle memories, emotions, familiar places, and imagined possibilities into entirely new scenarios. Published in Communications Psychology, the study combined two weeks of dream and daily experience diaries with data on participants' personalities, sleep quality, cognitive abilities, and psychological traits. Researchers used NLP to compare the semantic structure of the waking and dream reports. Everyday settings such as workplaces, hospitals, and classrooms were combined with unrelated places, shifting viewpoints, or unfamiliar surroundings, while different parts of a person's life could merge into a single scene. The findings suggest dreams do not replay reality so much as rebuild it from familiar parts. Dream reports also varied with participants' traits and attitudes. Those prone to mind-wandering tended to report dreams that jumped quickly from one scene to another, while those who said dreams were personally meaningful generally described more vivid and immersive experiences. The researchers also looked at dream reports collected during the COVID-19 lockdown by a separate team at Sapienza University of Rome. Compared with more recent reports, those dreams contained more references to confinement, barriers, restrictions, and heightened emotions, reflecting the reality people were living through at the time. "Our findings show that dreams are not just a reflection of past experiences, but a dynamic process shaped by who we are and what we live through," said lead author Valentina Elce. "By combining large-scale data with computational methods, we were able to uncover patterns in dream content that were previously difficult to detect." The work also hints at a new role for AI. Rather than asking researchers to read and categorize thousands of dream reports themselves, the team used NLP to spot patterns across the entire dataset. The software's assessments closely matched those of independent human reviewers, suggesting it could make large-scale dream studies far less laborious. Before you ask ChatGPT why your dentist turned into your boss, the research has some obvious limitations. It relies on people remembering and accurately describing their dreams, and it doesn't explain why we dream in the first place. However, it does suggest dreams have more structure than random neural noise – even if your brain still insists on making you sit an exam you forgot to revise for. ®

OPINION A week after becoming the UK's seventh Prime Minister in ten years, Andy Burnham has made some good headlines, but, among the promises to cap bus fares and end rough sleeping, something was missing. The post of a dedicated technology minister is gone. The last serving secretary of state, Liz Kendall, was sacked when Burnham decided the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) should be broken up and its responsibilities divided among the Cabinet Office, the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST), and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). A new AI minister role was created and filled by Kanishka Narayan to work jointly with the Cabinet Office and BIST. He will attend Cabinet. It is just the latest merry-go-round for the people charged with using technology to improve the way government works and helping to modernize the public sector's ailing legacy systems. The Government Digital Service was created by David Cameron's Conservative government in 2011 and sat in the Cabinet Office until 2024, when Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer moved it to DSIT. Now it has its third home in little more than two years with the move to DCMS. With it will travel the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence, which the Starmer government designed to help public sector organizations stand up to global tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and the big four consultancies. As well as saving money, it is also supposed to open opportunities for smaller UK startups in public sector contracts in a bid to boost economic growth. Taking soundings last week, Burnham's decision to tinker with the machinery of government – as Whitehall mandarins like to call it – risks creating an incoherent approach to tech management, procurement, and policy. Ian Murray is the only "digital" minister in DCMS, and he does not have a Cabinet position. Government tech is squeezed into his brief between societal problems such as digital inclusion and online harms. That isn't to argue such things are trivial – they're not – but they are very different to making government tech work. And they are likely to be far more emotive and noisier in terms of media attention. Any changes Murray tries to drive through will have to contend with Dame Antonia Romeo, who was appointed as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service on February 19. Some people with a close knowledge of Whitehall are not rating his chances. Does it matter? We can only judge by what the government sets out to do. It was only in January that Murray promised Parliament he would "strengthen and extend our digital and data public infrastructure." He said the government would get a view of its digital estate and remove legacy technology, providing common platforms and shared direction. Easier said than done. At the same time, the Roadmap for Modern Digital Government said it would transform how "the whole of the public sector" uses technology to help citizens. In that plan, it also said there would be a role for UK tech companies through a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence that would "get the best from our suppliers and create opportunities for the UK tech sector." The Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence has now moved with GDS from DSIT to DCMS. All this came after the government promised it could find £45 billion in internal efficiency savings through automation and AI, a claim met with skepticism by experts and described as a distraction by MPs. So a lot is at stake if Burnham's changes fail to achieve anything like the things his predecessor promised. But the promises themselves bely a deeper problem. In April 2024, The Register reported on documents from the Cabinet Office's Central Digital & Data Office, which said the government's commercial dealings with the dominant cloud vendors risked "concentration and vendor lock-in that inhibit the UK government's negotiating power." It's hardly a starting position of strength. And adding to that confused messaging, former tech minister Kendall later promised more whole-government deals with industry giants following its £9 billion agreement with Microsoft, seeking to target other cloud service providers. If the tail has been wagging the dog, who's going to stop it? The people who were perhaps in that position have moved departments again and lack Cabinet representation. Meanwhile, The Register has recorded for years that government frequently awards billions in IT contracts to incumbent tech giants, seemingly through lack of investment in commensurate internal technical and commercial skills. In just one example, we reported in January 2025 that the UK tax collector had awarded £3.8 billion to three incumbent tech suppliers – including £591 million without any outside competition – which were part of a £10 billion deal from 2004 that was only supposed to last ten years. Any effort to tackle that problem will now come from within DCMS, and compete for ministerial attention with, for example, decisions about the BBC or the Premier League. Meanwhile, Narayan is set to lead an AI Taskforce housed in the new Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to "drive the Government's overall strategy on AI and unlock the opportunities it holds for growth, prosperity and public sector transformation." The taskforce will also report to Romeo and "deliver the Prime Minister's AI agenda." Murray may be lucky to get a look-in. Maybe Narayan will find a way of standing up to big tech firms while also getting them to invest in the UK. But the temptation will always be there to get a quick publicity hit, as former technology minister Peter Kyle did with an agreement with Google last year, which aimed "to upskill up to 100,000 civil servants in the latest tech by 2030." It turned out the agreement had no contractual teeth. With AI strategy right at the center of government and efforts to better manage suppliers at arm's length, tech companies are likely to see a big opportunity. Some good news has come out of Burnham's arrival in 10 Downing Street. At least he canceled plans for a national digital ID scheme, an uncosted solution looking for a problem. But something is missing at the heart of the changes. Responsibility for getting to grips with legacy systems, public sector data, and commercial relationships with tech giants now sits apart from the mission to use AI to improve prosperity and transform the public sector. Unless the government addresses that schism, Burnham's decision to throw a spanner in the machinery of government could come back to haunt him. ®

From Call of Duty to Dreamtime: These designers are lighting up video games. Meet the Indigenous creatives who are re-shaping Australia's video game industry.

What became the Weird was forged from Gothic materials in the smithies of the American magazine. Edgar Allan Poe's poetic stories took narrative motifs from Gothics and transplanted them into atemporal dream space. When Gothics take place in Europe, it's the fairy tale Europe of the imagination; when they take place in America, it's anonymous towns and landscapes. There's no history to repress—the horror is present and its origins unclear.

Het huidige seizoen van ‘B&B vol liefde’ is met Carolie een nieuw type man rijker: de man die een womanizer meent te zijn. Het is een van de favoriete typen man van onze recensent, maar dan wel om óver te praten – niet per se mét.

De Tsjadische autoriteiten zeggen zich terug te trekken uit het Internationaal Strafhof vanwege een „gebrek aan effectiviteit” en een vooringenomenheid ten opzichte van Afrikaanse landen. Maar de druk van de Amerikanen is onmiskenbaar.

In Londen is een grote expositie te zien van de Spaanse barokschilder Francisco de Zurbarán. Zijn schaap is nog steeds onovertroffen.

Onder meer de Europese voetbalbond UEFA en de Britse premier Andy Burnham hebben kritiek geuit op het plan van wereldvoetbalbond FIFA om commerciële rechten van toekomstige WK’s…

De verdachten zijn tussen de 16 en 19 jaar oud, twee van hen zijn minderjarig. Volgens het Eindhovens Dagblad werd één van hen eerder verdacht van het voorbereiden van een terroristische aanslag.

​Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius is voor de vierde maal op rij verkozen tot symboolpoliticus van het jaar. Ze hield dit jaar Caroline van der Plas en Mona Keijzer ruim achter zich.

De vakjury roemt de VVD-politica om haar vermogen volstrekt onzinnige voorstellen essentieel te doen lijken voor de bühne. “Of het nu gaat om harder straffen terwijl dat al lang gebeurt of niet mogelijk is, of onnodige opruiing in het Israël-Palestinadebat om haar zielige puntje te maken, door haar overtuigingskracht doet ze echt geloven dat wat ze doet relevant en in sommige gevallen zelfs cruciaal is voor hoe we in dit land met elkaar om moeten gaan. Ze staat hierin op eenzame hoogte”, valt te lezen in het juryrapport.

Er gaan geruchten dat Yesilgöz volgend jaar kan rekenen op een oeuvre-award voor haar jarenlange bijdrage aan de Nederlandse symboolpolitiek.

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jspeter9191 has added a photo to the pool:

Today(29/07/26) evening at Tallawong, Sydney, Australia.
Jesus loves you.

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

Dead tree against the winter sky, Ellis Brook Valley WA