An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Sony reportedly won't release its major single-player PlayStation games on PC anymore. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Hermen Hulst, who heads up PlayStation's studios business, informed employees in a town hall on Monday about the change in strategy. Schreier had previously reported on the shift in March, saying that Sony scrapped plans to launch PC versions of last year's Ghost of Ytei and "other internally developed games." Online games will still come to multiple platforms following this change in strategy, Schreier reported at the time.

In recent years, Sony has released many of its biggest games on PC, including Spider-Man 2, Ghost of Tsushima, both The Last of Us games, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, and multiplayer titles like Helldivers 2 and Marathon. Two years ago, Hulst committed to releasing PlayStation's live-service games "day and date" on PC and PS5, but its single-player PC releases have been less consistent, with Hulst saying that the company takes a "more strategic approach." In April, Microsoft's new Xbox chief Asha Sharma said the company is "reevaluating" exclusive games for the platform. "Players are frustrated," she wrote in a memo. "New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn't strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented."

"The model that got us here won't be the one that takes us forward," the memo adds.

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The FBI is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to automated license plate reader (ALPRs) data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database. 404 Media reports: "The FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United States. This data should be available across major highways and in an array of locations for maximum usefulness to law enforcement," a statement of work, which describes what data the FBI is seeking access to, reads. ALPR cameras generally work by constantly scanning the color, brand, model, and license plate of vehicles that drive by. This creates a timestamped record of where a particular vehicle was at a specific time that law enforcement can then query, effectively letting them see exactly where someone drove across time. The technology has existed for decades, but has become more pervasive in recent years.

The FBI says it is looking for a vendor that will let it log into a Software-as-a-Service system and then query the collected ALPR data with license plate information, a description of the vehicle, a time or date, and geolocation information. The FBI says it is looking for ALPR coverage in the following areas: Eastern 48 (East of the Mississippi River); Western 48 (West of the Mississippi River); Hawaii; Puerto Rico; Alaska; and outlying areas such as Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Tribal Territories. In effect, the FBI is looking for ALPR data nationwide and even beyond. An attached price template indicates the FBI is willing to pay $6 million for each of those broad areas, bringing the total to $36 million.

The FBI says it intends to award the contract to a single vendor, but if any such vendor is unable to fulfill all of the requirements, the agency may award the contract to up to two vendors. The contract is specifically for the FBI's Directorate of Intelligence, which oversees the agency's intelligence mission. The FBI is not only a law enforcement agency, but also part of the Intelligence Community. The report notes that the contract appears aimed at vendors like Flock or Motorola Solutions, since they're some of the only companies able to provide the sort of data the FBI is seeking.

Further reading: Small Town Fights Over Flock's AI-Enhanced Network of License Plate-Reading Cameras

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A researcher known as Chaotic Eclipse has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a new Windows zero-day dubbed MiniPlasma, which BleepingComputer confirmed can grant SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 11 systems. The researcher claims the bug is effectively a still-exploitable version of a 2020 flaw Microsoft said it had fixed. From the report: At the time, the flaw was assigned the CVE-2020-17103 identifier and reportedly fixed in December 2020. "After investigating, it turns out the exact same issue that was reported to Microsoft by Google project zero is actually still present, unpatched," explains Chaotic Eclipse. "I'm unsure if Microsoft just never patched the issue or the patch was silently rolled back at some point for unknown reasons. The original PoC by Google worked without any changes."

BleepingComputer tested the exploit on a fully patched Windows 11 Pro system running the latest May 2026 Patch Tuesday updates. In our test, we used a standard user account, and after running the exploit, it opened a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges, as shown in the image [here]. Will Dormann, principal vulnerability analyst at Tharros, also confirmed the exploit works in his tests on the latest public version of Windows 11. However, he said that the flaw does not work in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Canary build.

The exploit appears to abuse how the Windows Cloud Filter driver handles registry key creation through an undocumented CfAbortHydration API. Forshaw's original report said that the flaw could allow arbitrary registry keys to be created in the .DEFAULT user hive without proper access checks, potentially enabling privilege escalation. While Microsoft reports having fixed the bug as part of its December 2020 Microsoft Patch Tuesday, Chaotic Eclipse now claims the vulnerability can still be exploited.

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WASHINGTON (ANP/DPA) - De Amerikaanse arts die besmet is met het ebolavirus wordt in Duitsland behandeld, meldden Amerikaanse autoriteiten. De arts werkte in de Democratische Republiek Congo (DRC) en testte zondagavond laat positief, aldus de Amerikaanse Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Vanwege kortere vliegtijden en de ervaring van Duitsland met de verzorging van ebolapatiënten wordt de besmette persoon naar Duitsland overgebracht, samen met zes contactpersonen met een hoog risico. Er is geen informatie verstrekt over hun nationaliteiten. Ook zijn er geen details bekend over de exacte behandellocatie in Duitsland.

De Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie (WHO) heeft een internationale gezondheidscrisis uitgeroepen vanwege de ebola-uitbraak in de DRC en Oeganda. De uitbraak betreft een zeldzame variant van het virus waarvoor geen vaccin bestaat. Het risico op verspreiding in de regio wordt als hoog beschouwd.

Een gezagvoerder bij KLM kan met alle toeslagen meer dan 338.000 euro per jaar verdienen, terwijl een beginnende co-piloot bij EasyJet op het Europese vasteland start met zo'n 36.000 euro bruto. De salariskloof tussen de drie grootste in Nederland actieve luchtvaartmaatschappijen is fors — en zegt veel over het verdienmodel van de bedrijven.

Wie aan een carrière in de cockpit denkt, kijkt al snel naar KLM, Transavia of EasyJet. De drie maatschappijen vliegen vanuit Schiphol, Eindhoven en Rotterdam, maar hanteren totaal verschillende cao's. Een vergelijking van de actuele schalen laat zien waar het grote geld zit — en waar piloten vooral op uren en sectortoeslagen moeten leunen.

KLM: koploper dankzij langeafstand en winstdeling

KLM betaalt veruit het beste van de drie. Dat komt door het intercontinentale netwerk, het sterke pilotenkorps van de Vereniging van Nederlandse Verkeersvliegers (VNV) en een cao met veertien maandsalarissen — piloten ontvangen in mei en december een dubbel salaris.

Daar bovenop komt een winstuitkering en een onkostenvergoeding van 300 tot 600 euro per maand voor piloten op een volledig langeafstandsrooster. KLM garandeert bovendien een vast salaris, ongeacht het aantal vlieguren per maand — een belangrijk verschil met de prijsvechters. Volgens Aviationa2z ligt het maandsalaris van een captain tussen 12.500 en 20.000 euro bruto.

Secundair zijn de voorwaarden minstens zo opvallend: een werkgeversbijdrage aan het pensioen van 25 tot 42 procent, 41 verlofdagen per jaar en aantrekkelijke reisvoordelen voor piloot en gezin ( KLM pilotenoverzicht).

Transavia: middenmoot met snelle doorgroei

Bij Transavia, de low-cost dochter van Air France-KLM, liggen de salarissen lager dan bij het moederbedrijf, maar duidelijk boven het Europese gemiddelde in het low-costsegment. De maatschappij hanteert een cao met basissalaris, vlieguurtoeslag (gemiddeld 10 procent maandpremie), een eindejaarsbonus van 8,33 procent en 8 procent vakantiegeld ( Ready for Take Off).

Een beginnende First Officer verdient tussen de 65.000 en 80.000 euro bruto per jaar. Wie al een type rating heeft en zo'n 2.800 vlieguren op de teller heeft staan, stapt direct in op ruim 110.000 euro. De top van de FO-schaal ligt rond de 169.000 euro.

Voor gezagvoerders begint de schaal rond de 130.000 tot 150.000 euro bruto per jaar — een upgrade gebeurt momenteel na zeven tot acht jaar senioriteit. De top van de captain-schaal ligt rond de 171.000 euro. Een captain op de Boeing 737 vanuit de basis Brussel start volgens Werken bij Transavia met 11.000 euro bruto per maand, met jaarlijkse verhogingen van gemiddeld 300 euro per maand bovenop inflatiecorrectie.

EasyJet: laagste basis, sterk afhankelijk van sector pay

EasyJet betaalt op het Europese vasteland — inclusief de Nederlandse basissen — duidelijk minder dan KLM en Transavia. Bovendien is er een opmerkelijke interne kloof: Britse EasyJet-captains verdienen tot 191.000 pond (ongeveer 225.000 euro), terwijl hun continentale collega's op een fors lager basissalaris zitten.

EasyJet-piloten leunen zwaar op variabele beloning. Per gevlogen sector ontvangt een FO 20 tot 25 euro, captains krijgen een hoger tarief. Op een typische dag met vier sectoren komt er zo 80 tot 100 euro per dienst bovenop het basissalaris — over een jaar oplopend tot 15.000 à 25.000 euro extra. Daarnaast zijn er per diems voor overnachtingen en loyaliteitsbonussen na twee dienstjaren.

Waarom de verschillen zo groot zijn

Drie factoren verklaren de salariskloof. Ten eerste het netwerk: KLM vliegt wereldwijd en zet grote widebody-toestellen in, waar internationaal hogere salarissen gangbaar zijn. Ten tweede de cao-traditie: KLM-piloten zijn sterk vakbondsgeorganiseerd, terwijl EasyJet meer leunt op individuele en lokale contracten per basis. Ten derde het verdienmodel: prijsvechters drukken de vaste loonkosten en compenseren via variabele sector pay — voordelig voor de werkgever bij minder vlieguren, minder zeker voor de piloot.

Voor wie als piloot zo veel mogelijk wil verdienen blijft KLM de duidelijke nummer één in Nederland. Wie sneller wil doorgroeien naar gezagvoerder kiest eerder voor Transavia of EasyJet, waar de wachttijd voor een upgrade korter is — maar waar het uiteindelijke salarisplafond aanzienlijk lager ligt.

Bronnen: Pilot Jobs Network – KLM, Aviationa2z, Ready for Take Off – Transavia, Ready for Take Off – EasyJet Europe, Werken bij Transavia.

Al jaren neemt de geluidshinder van Schiphol toe. Tegerlijkertijd is de luchthaven de laatste jaren juist flink gegroeid. Politiek Den Haag moét kiezen, maar doet dat nooit.

Global Sumud Flotilla organisers say 38 ships holding 319 activists were about 250 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza when they were intercepted

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Eleven Australians attempting to deliver aid to Gaza as part of a global flotilla have been detained by Israeli forces in international waters off the coast of Cyprus, with the government “urgently seeking” confirmation of their welfare.

On Monday local time, the Global Sumud Flotilla alleged the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) encircled 38 ships that were part of a fleet of 54 boats which left Turkey last week for the embattled strip, which remains under naval blockade by Israel.

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King distinguished herself as a tennis champ at Cal State Los Angeles, winning Wimbledon doubles while enrolled

When Billie Jean King left college in 1964, she had a purpose. Within a few years, she had become the top-ranked tennis professional in the world. Over a trailblazing career, she won 39 championships, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a congressional Medal of Honor – all while pushing publicly for gender and pay equality.

Last year, she finally returned to finish the degree in history she started more than six decades ago. On Monday, she graduated, at 82 years old.

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Suifenhe, a small city in China’s economically depressed rust belt, is a microcosm of an evolving Chinese-Russian trading relationship

Suited and booted in a navy twinset tracksuit and colourful high-top trainers, Wang Runguo is hustling. Darting across the gleaming floors of his cavernous car showroom, the 45-year-old from one of China’s poorest provinces is closing on yet another deal. It is all in a day’s work for the man whose salary has more than doubled in the past year thanks to a well-timed pivot: from corn to cars; from China to Russia.

This time last year Wang was working for an agricultural company that grew corn and soya beans for the domestic market. Now he is a manager at Xingyun International Automobile Export, a company founded in August 2025 to cater to the booming new car export industry in Suifenhe, a small city in China’s north-east that borders Russia. “Recently, China and Russia have been moving closer together,” Wang says. “As we move closer, more and more cars are going there.”

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President says he has instructed US military to be ready for ‘a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice’ – key US politics stories from Monday 18 May

Donald Trump says he has called off a planned attack on Iran at the behest of Gulf states so talks could continue.

In a post to his Truth Social platform, the US president claimed that the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia had approached Washington because of the chance of reaching a deal that would be “very acceptable” to the US, and preclude Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide August 1968

VMware has quietly debuted a technology preview of its flagship ESX hypervisor that is capable of running on Arm processors and servers. The virtualization giant teased its new tech in a Xeet which piqued our interest and led to the discovery of this document [PDF] on the public internet that explains the hypervisor supports guests running RHEL, Ubuntu, and SUSE, on servers from HPE and Gigabyte powered by Ampere processors, or Supermicro’s ARS-221GL model with an Nvidia Grace processor. The document offers slightly contradictory advice to the effect that “Arm host clusters must be managed by a separate, standalone vCenter running on x86. We do not recommend managing x86 installations and Arm installations from the same vCenter.” The tech preview appears to be a very basic affair, as it lacks support for vSAN hyperconverged storage, NSX virtual networking, and plenty of other features VMware offers in its x86 hypervisor and Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. VMware has also made it possible to access Arm guests from its desktop hypervisors. As disclosed last week in release notes for new versions of the Workstation and Fusion products that add “the ability to connect to remote ARM-based ESXi, allowing users to manage VMs on remote ARM servers directly from VMware Workstation or Fusion on any supported platform.” Virtzilla is therefore making good on its promise to bring its hypervisor and VCF to the Arm architecture. The Broadcom business unit is porting its products because it thinks customers will increasingly turn to Arm servers on the network edge, perhaps for AI workloads. VMware is also aware that Arm processors can be more energy-efficient than x86 CPUs, and must also know that its hyperscale partners AWS, Microsoft, and Google aggressively promote their home-brew Arm processors as delivering superior performance-per-watt. In its announcement of its new desktop hypervisors, VMware offers another reason: “As development environments diversify, cross-architecture connectivity is essential.” VMware hasn’t offered a timeline to get ESX on Arm ready for a full release, but the company has previously told us it’s in no rush because customers are currently Arm-curious rather than in a rush to shift workloads onto the architecture. While VMware explores a new architecture, its rivals continue to prepare products they hope will prize away some users who feel Broadcom’s licensing regime isn’t to their liking. Platform9 last week debuted “Platform9 OS”, a cut of Linux that encapsulates its Private Cloud Director in an appliance-like format so that users don’t need Linux administration skills to adopt its stack. Platform9 is going after VMware’s top 10,000 customers with a promise it won’t try to lock them in with licensing or restrictive hardware compatibility lists. Australian outfit Netframe takes a similar approach with its wares and has chosen to walk down a well-worn path by creating a free version of its eponymous product that allows users to run up to three hosts. The company thinks that offering will attract home lab operators and small shops who will be sufficiently impressed by the product to upgrade and sign up for support. ®

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:

iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool: