F1 World Champion Jenson Button is joining Aston Martin as a Team Ambassador ahead of the 2026 season, the Silverstone-based squad have announced.
Fred Vesti has been confirmed as Mercedes’ Third Driver for the 2026 season, with the Dane admitting that he is “extremely excited” to make the step up after working with the team for the past few years.
The U.S. laid fiber-optic cables to a record number of homes last year as billions of dollars in federal broadband grants and a surge in data-center construction fueled an enormous buildout, but the industry does not have enough workers to sustain the pace.
A 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Association projects 58,000 new fiber jobs between 2025 and 2032 and estimates 120,000 workers will leave the field in that period, mostly through retirement -- a combined shortage of 178,000. The gap is especially acute among splicers, who fuse hair-thin filaments by hand, and directional drill operators.
Telecommunications line installers and repairers earned annual median wages of $70,500 for the year ended May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, against a $49,500 national median. Push, a utility-construction firm, raised hourly pay for fiber crews by 5% to 8% in each of the past several years and expects the pace to quicken.
A 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Association projects 58,000 new fiber jobs between 2025 and 2032 and estimates 120,000 workers will leave the field in that period, mostly through retirement -- a combined shortage of 178,000. The gap is especially acute among splicers, who fuse hair-thin filaments by hand, and directional drill operators.
Telecommunications line installers and repairers earned annual median wages of $70,500 for the year ended May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, against a $49,500 national median. Push, a utility-construction firm, raised hourly pay for fiber crews by 5% to 8% in each of the past several years and expects the pace to quicken.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Darren Aronofsky’s AI Studio Used Artificial Intelligence Tools for Revolutionary War Animated Series. Interesting use of “animated” to mean “AI-generated photorealism”. I watched the trailer…everything looks vaguely plastic.
Ondanks de slechte resultaten van de afgelopen maanden staat Feyenoord nog steeds op plek twee. In FC Rijnmond gaat het over de gevolgen als Feyenoord niet eindigt op deze positie en dus miljoenen misloopt met wederom geen deelname aan de Champions League.
The Girl, based on Samantha Geimer’s memoir, will revisit ‘one of Hollywood’s most notorious scandals through the eyes of the person most misrepresented by it’
A new movie will explore the notorious Roman Polanski statutory rape scandal from the perspective of the 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer.
The Girl, based on Geimer’s 2013 memoir The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, will trace her time in the famous director’s orbit in the 1970s, her experience being subjected to sexual assault and the media maelstrom that followed after Polanski, then 43, was arrested in 1977 on charges of statutory rape and lewd and lascivious act with a child.
Continue reading...British Medical Association members back further action as part of long-running row over pay and jobs
Resident doctors in England have voted in favour of continuing industrial action over the next six months, the British Medical Association has announced.
Ninety-three per cent of medics voted in favour of continuing industrial action in a new ballot. The turnout was 53%.
Continue reading...Vladimir Motin was on sole watch when his vessel crashed into the Stena Immaculate near the Humber estuary
The Russian captain of a ship that crashed into an oil tanker off the Yorkshire coast has been found guilty of killing a crew member in the collision.
Vladimir Motin, a 59-year-old from St Petersburg, was on sole watch when his ship, the Solong, collided into the Stena Immaculate oil tanker near the Humber estuary on 10 March last year. Mark Angelo Pernia, a 38-year-old Filipino man, was killed in the wreck.
Continue reading...Mercedes principal insists their new car is within rules
‘Other teams are finding excuses before they have started’
Toto Wolff has dismissed claims from rival teams over the legality of Mercedes’ new engine, insisting it is within the regulations. The Mercedes team principal said that the onus lay with the other manufacturers who had missed an opportunity and that they should get their “shit together”.
The row over whether Mercedes and Red Bull have stolen a march on the opposition in their engine design has dominated the buildup to the new season and Wolff notably did not rule out other teams protesting against the legality of their engines after they are used competitively for the first time at the Australian Grand Prix on 8 March.
Continue reading...Counterculture comedy One Battle After Another wins four awards, including best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor for Sean Penn
Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy One Battle After Another continued its march to Oscars glory at the London Critics’ Circle film awards on Sunday evening, taking four awards, including best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor for Sean Penn.
In his speech to pick up the screenplay award, Anderson said he wanted to share the award with the Guardian’s Xan Brooks for his review of Brett Ratner’s Melania, which was published on Friday. “It was one of the best pieces of writing,” said Anderson. “Pretty damn good.”
Continue reading...WASHINGTON (ANP) - De Verenigde Staten werken aan een miljardenfonds om voorraden aan te leggen van strategische aardmetalen. Zo wil de regering van president Donald Trump dat bedrijven minder vatbaar worden voor verstoringen in de toelevering vanuit andere landen, zoals China.
Het fonds gaat bestaan uit zo'n 12 miljard dollar (ruim 10 miljard euro), melden hooggeplaatste regeringsambtenaren aan persbureau Bloomberg. 10 miljard hiervan wordt geleend van de Export-Import Bank, die nooit eerder zo'n groot bedrag beschikbaar stelde. Het bedrijfsleven draagt een kleine 2 miljard dollar bij.
Strategische mineralen als gallium en kobalt zijn onder meer belangrijk voor de productie van iPhones, batterijen en vliegtuigmotoren. Bedrijven als General Motors, Stellantis, Boeing en Google-moederbedrijf Alphabet zijn betrokken bij het project.
China, de belangrijkste leverancier en verwerker van zeldzame mineralen, heeft afgelopen jaar in de handelsoorlog de levering van bepaalde materialen al eens stilgezet.
Some people take their sweet, sweet time to pay back money they owe you. In this economy, that behavior isn’t just annoying, it’s downright rude! That’s why it’s so incredible to see mobile payment services roll out an accountability-minded feature like this: Venmo’s newest feature will register users who ignore a friend’s payment for more than a week as sex offenders.
Absolutely brilliant. Friends who ‘conveniently’ don’t see your Venmo request for weeks on end are about to learn a big, big lesson about financial responsibility!
Announced in a press release today, Venmo’s new policy, meant to deter people from dragging out their response to a friend’s payment request, automatically registers users on the National Sex Offender Public Website for failing to repay a friend within seven business days. Regardless of the transaction’s size, whether it’s $5 or $1,000, ignoring a friend’s Venmo request for over a week will now result in the same level of social disgrace and loss of rights normally reserved for convicted sexual predators.
The request’s sender can issue friends a ‘Reminder’ that their life will be ruined if they don’t settle up soon, but once those seven days pass, the only Venmo transactions these users will be making are with their criminal pervert neighbors in the trailer park they’re forced to live in due to the limited housing options available to registered sex offenders.
“Paying back friends in a timely manner simply isn’t a priority for some of the lazier, more disrespectful Venmo users out there, but it’s about to be, if the threat of permanent social ruin is enough motivation for them,” wrote Eden Robbins, Venmo’s Director of Product Design, in the feature’s announcement.
“Venmo makes paying friends as simple as tapping a few buttons. The process is far too easy to prolong for over a week. Know what’s not easy? Rebuilding your life after winding up on a public sex offender registry. We advise all Venmo users to start paying friends back sooner than later, as we’re currently developing even harsher repercussions for people who take over a week to pay back amounts under $25, because drawing out your response to a request that reasonable, when you could just tap three buttons and move on, is petty in a way that necessitates an equally drawn out, violent response.”
Wow. Venmo is bringing back personal accountability in a huge way!
This is incredible peace of mind for anyone putting their card down when out with friends. Here’s to Venmo for leading with a stick and teaching its entire user base a valuable lesson about paying people back on a respectful timetable!
The Russian foreign minister said the disruption of energy supplies to Cuba "threatens to seriously worsen the economic and humanitarian situation in the country."
The expulsion came after Moscow accused a British diplomat of being a spy and ordered him to leave the country.
Cuts out the Azure middleman with multi-year deal for 'tighter alignment'
Snowflake plans to spend as much as $200 million with OpenAI to bring its models and chatbot into the database vendor's sandbox and toolset. Features such as Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence will get a boost from the house of Altman.…
Fors snijden in uitkeringskosten voor werklozen, arbeidsongeschikten en gepensioneerden: D66, CDA en VVD willen miljarden besparen op sociale zekerheid. Is daar inhoudelijk iets voor te zeggen?
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