Ferrari's Charles Leclerc ended the first and only practice session of the Miami Grand Prix weekend on top.
Team Principal Fred Vasseur has confirmed that Ferrari will run its 'flip-flop' rear wing during this weekend's Miami Grand Prix.
Live coverage of Friday's Sprint Qualifying session at the 2026 Miami Grand Prix.
Alpine Academy ART Grand Prix driver Kush Maini sealed pole position during F2 Qualifying in Miami.
Charles Leclerc topped the timesheets as the 2026 F1 season resumed with Free Practice 1 for the Miami Grand Prix on Friday – the Ferrari driver leading the way from Red Bull rival Max Verstappen and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, while Mercedes faced early issues.
The newly-launched F1 Flagship Store in Miami offers fans an experience unlike anything else.
ZipNada shares a report from ZDNet: Given the dour headlines as of late concerning the diminishing amounts of entry-level software development jobs, coupled with predictions of applications entirely AI-generated, one could be forgiven for assuming that software developers may soon be an endangered species. However, the data tells a different story. James Bessen, professor at Boston University, has been pushing back for some time against the talk of AI and automation displacing jobs on a mass scale, and lately has been arguing that the roles of software developers are nowhere near extinction.
AI is certainly not killing the software developer, Bessen said in a recent analysis (PDF). AI is taking over software development tasks and boosting productivity and output, but that is not translating into lost jobs, he argued. Instead, the types of software skills sought by companies are changing. "Surprisingly, however, after three years of AI use, software developer jobs have continued to grow robustly, reaching record levels of employment -- 2.5 million in February," Bessen said in the report, citing data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of software developers in the US has grown by over 400,000, or 19%, since ChatGPT was introduced in 2022. At that time, the employed software developer population was just under 2.1 million. [...]
The productivity uptick developers are seeing may ultimately be a boost to their professional opportunities, however. "An important and possibly disruptive change is happening, but the common view misunderstands what is going on," Bessen pointed out in his report. "Careful case studies find that AI improves the productivity of software developers -- that is, the software produced per developer -- by 30%, 50%, or more. And the rate of productivity improvement in software development is improving." Tellingly, since 2022, when ChatGPT was introduced, developer productivity has increased noticeably, Bessen continued. "From 2003 to 2022, developer productivity grew at 3.9% per year; but from 2022 through 2025, it grew at 6% per year." [...] A coming flood of new software products, now more likely to be enhanced by AI, will continue to create jobs for developers, Bessen predicted. "Thus, mass unemployment of software developers seems unlikely to happen soon." This doesn't mean the job descriptions of developers or other computer occupations will remain static. AI is shifting and re-inventing these roles, Bessen added.
AI is certainly not killing the software developer, Bessen said in a recent analysis (PDF). AI is taking over software development tasks and boosting productivity and output, but that is not translating into lost jobs, he argued. Instead, the types of software skills sought by companies are changing. "Surprisingly, however, after three years of AI use, software developer jobs have continued to grow robustly, reaching record levels of employment -- 2.5 million in February," Bessen said in the report, citing data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of software developers in the US has grown by over 400,000, or 19%, since ChatGPT was introduced in 2022. At that time, the employed software developer population was just under 2.1 million. [...]
The productivity uptick developers are seeing may ultimately be a boost to their professional opportunities, however. "An important and possibly disruptive change is happening, but the common view misunderstands what is going on," Bessen pointed out in his report. "Careful case studies find that AI improves the productivity of software developers -- that is, the software produced per developer -- by 30%, 50%, or more. And the rate of productivity improvement in software development is improving." Tellingly, since 2022, when ChatGPT was introduced, developer productivity has increased noticeably, Bessen continued. "From 2003 to 2022, developer productivity grew at 3.9% per year; but from 2022 through 2025, it grew at 6% per year." [...] A coming flood of new software products, now more likely to be enhanced by AI, will continue to create jobs for developers, Bessen predicted. "Thus, mass unemployment of software developers seems unlikely to happen soon." This doesn't mean the job descriptions of developers or other computer occupations will remain static. AI is shifting and re-inventing these roles, Bessen added.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, Anthropic made a big deal about the supposedly outsize cybersecurity threat represented by its Mythos Preview model, leading the company to restrict the initial release to "critical industry partners." But new research from the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) suggests that OpenAI's GPT-5.5, which launched publicly last week, reached "a similar level of performance on our cyber evaluations" as Mythos Preview, which the group evaluated last month.
Since 2023, the AISI has run a variety of frontier AI models through 95 different Capture the Flag challenges designed to test capabilities on cybersecurity tasks, such as reverse engineering, web exploitation, and cryptography. On the highest-level "Expert" tasks, GPT-5.5 passed an average of 71.4 percent, slightly higher than the 68.6 percent achieved by Mythos Preview (though within the margin of error). In one particularly difficult task that involved building a disassembler to decode a Rust binary, AISI notes that "GPT-5.5 solved the challenge in 10 minutes and 22 seconds with no human assistance at a cost of $1.73" in API calls.
GPT-5.5 also matched Mythos Preview in its progress on "The Last Ones" (TLO), an AISI test range set up to simulate a 32-step data extraction attack on a corporate network. GPT-5.5 succeeded in 3 of 10 attempts on TLO, compared to 2 of 10 for Mythos Preview -- no previous model had ever succeeded at the test even once. But GPT-5.5 still fails at AISI's more difficult "Cooling Tower" simulation of an attempted disruption of the control software for a power plant, as every previously tested AI model also has. The new results for GPT-5.5 suggest that, when it comes to cybersecurity risk, Mythos Preview was likely not "a breakthrough specific to one model" but rather "a byproduct of more general improvements in long-horizon autonomy, reasoning, and coding," AISI writes.
Since 2023, the AISI has run a variety of frontier AI models through 95 different Capture the Flag challenges designed to test capabilities on cybersecurity tasks, such as reverse engineering, web exploitation, and cryptography. On the highest-level "Expert" tasks, GPT-5.5 passed an average of 71.4 percent, slightly higher than the 68.6 percent achieved by Mythos Preview (though within the margin of error). In one particularly difficult task that involved building a disassembler to decode a Rust binary, AISI notes that "GPT-5.5 solved the challenge in 10 minutes and 22 seconds with no human assistance at a cost of $1.73" in API calls.
GPT-5.5 also matched Mythos Preview in its progress on "The Last Ones" (TLO), an AISI test range set up to simulate a 32-step data extraction attack on a corporate network. GPT-5.5 succeeded in 3 of 10 attempts on TLO, compared to 2 of 10 for Mythos Preview -- no previous model had ever succeeded at the test even once. But GPT-5.5 still fails at AISI's more difficult "Cooling Tower" simulation of an attempted disruption of the control software for a power plant, as every previously tested AI model also has. The new results for GPT-5.5 suggest that, when it comes to cybersecurity risk, Mythos Preview was likely not "a breakthrough specific to one model" but rather "a byproduct of more general improvements in long-horizon autonomy, reasoning, and coding," AISI writes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Spotify is adding "Verified by Spotify" badges to distinguish human artists from AI-generated personas, using signals like linked social accounts, consistent listener activity, merchandise, and concert dates. The BBC reports: The world's most-used music streaming service said the 'Verified by Spotify' text and green checkmark icon would appear next to artist names when they meet "defined standards demonstrating authenticity." This could include having linked social accounts on their artist profile, consistent listener activity or other "signals of a real artist behind the profile," the company said, such as merchandise or concert dates.
In its blog post, Spotify said "more than 99%" of the artists listeners actively search for will be verified, representing "hundreds of thousands of artists." It said the process would prioritize acts with "important contributions to music culture and history", rather than "content farms," with the platform rolling out verification and badges over the coming weeks.
In its blog post, Spotify said "more than 99%" of the artists listeners actively search for will be verified, representing "hundreds of thousands of artists." It said the process would prioritize acts with "important contributions to music culture and history", rather than "content farms," with the platform rolling out verification and badges over the coming weeks.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Using the NY Times Archive API, journalist Ted Alcorn built Below the Fold, a dashboard through which you can explore the last 25 years of Times coverage: 2.2 million articles containing 1.5 billion words. You can slice and dice this data in a bunch of different ways — it’s a fantastic resource.
One of the site’s sections is about obituaries. From that data, Alcorn produced this infographic of whose obits contained the highest word count:
As you can see, it’s a lot of world leaders, religious leaders, politicians, and white men. There only appear to be five women on the list. Notable non-politicians include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Muhammad Ali, and Charles Schulz.
The whole dashboard is fun/enlightening to explore.
Tags: infoviz · journalism · NY Times · obituaries · Ted Alcorn
NEW YORK (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De Amerikaanse luchtvaartmaatschappij Spirit Airlines bereidt zich voor om de activiteiten te staken. Dat melden ingewijden aan The Wall Street Journal.
De noodlijdende budgetmaatschappij had gehoopt een reddingspakket van 500 miljoen dollar (ongeveer 426 miljoen euro) van de Amerikaanse overheid rond te krijgen voordat het geld zou opraken. Maar Spirit Airlines kon volgens de bronnen niet genoeg steun krijgen van bepaalde obligatiehouders en de overheid om de financiering veilig te stellen die nodig is om het bedrijf draaiende te houden. Ook heeft de vliegmaatschappij last van de gestegen brandstofprijzen door de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten.
Op de aandelenbeurzen in New York kelderde moederbedrijf Spirit Aviation tot 74 procent.
De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump zei vrijdag tegen verslaggevers in het Witte Huis dat de overheid nog steeds naar het reddingsplan kijkt en met een definitief voorstel komt. Een aankondiging kan volgens hem later vrijdag of zaterdag komen.
WASHINGTON (ANP/DPA/RTR) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump legt Cuba nieuwe sancties op. Hij verhoogt daarmee de druk op het communistisch bestuurde eiland, nadat hij eerder dit jaar de leider van Cuba's bondgenoot Venezuela had afgezet.
Het gaat volgens het Witte Huis om een aanscherping van bestaande sancties. Daarnaast komen er nieuwe maatregelen tegen "entiteiten, personen of gelieerde partijen" die het Cubaanse veiligheidsapparaat steunen of betrokken zijn bij corruptie of mensenrechtenschendingen, aldus een officiële verklaring.
De VS en het regime op Cuba, een eiland voor de Amerikaanse kust, hebben al sinds de communistische revolutie van de vorige eeuw een slechte relatie. De regering-Trump verwijt het land de eigen burgers te onderdrukken en vijanden van de VS te helpen.
Verklaring
"Cuba onderhoudt nauwe banden met andere landen die veel steun geven aan terrorisme, waaronder de regering van Iran, en biedt een veilige haven aan transnationale terroristische groeperingen, zoals Hezbollah", aldus de Amerikaanse verklaring.
Trump had zich al ingezet om olieleveranties aan Cuba te stoppen. Mede daardoor wankelt de Cubaanse economie. De president zei in maart dat hij waarschijnlijk "alles kan doen" wat hij wil met het eiland. "Ze zijn als land nu erg verzwakt."
Het Cubaanse regime probeerde vrijdag veerkracht te tonen op de Dag van de Arbeid. Cubanen gingen massaal de straat op en de invloedrijke oud-leider RaĂşl Castro (94), de broer van revolutionair Fidel Castro, deed mee aan een mars langs de Amerikaanse ambassade.
Semi-final poised at 7-7 after attritional 14th frame
Shaun Murphy and John Higgins deadlocked at 8-8
Wu Yize and Mark Allen’s semi-final is poised at seven frames all after their afternoon session ended with the longest frame in World Snooker Championship history, clocking in at just over 100 minutes.
Allen began the afternoon trailing 6-2 overnight to an opponent high on confidence and belief, but fought back in style, winning five frames in a row to edge 7-6 ahead.
Continue reading...Leo, who has criticized Trump’s hardline immigration policy, selected Evelio Menjivar-Ayala as state’s new bishop
Pope Leo XIV has appointed a man who had once entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant, hidden in the trunk of a car, as the new bishop of West Virginia.
The pope approved the resignation of Bishop Mark E Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, and selected Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, 55, of Washington to take his place, reported OSV News.
Continue reading...The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has also rewritten rules on international film eligibility
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced a number of major changes for the Oscars on Friday, including a new policy allowing multiple nominations for a single actor in one category, as well as barring acting and writing awards for work done by AI.
According to new statutes decreed by the group’s board of governors, only performances “demonstrably performed” by humans with their consent will be eligible for acting Oscars, while only human-authored screenplays can be up for any writing awards.
Continue reading...
Pleasure and mastery. I devote myself to the feel of the cool ebony fretboard, to the gentle pressure on my ring finger as I use it to mute the fourth string, to the difference in tone when I pluck a string with my nail or with the pulp of my finger, to the vibration of my guitar against my belly when I strike the strings with gusto. When I play the final chord of "Asturias," I lift my guitar to my ear, pressing it hard against my concha. I hear the notes resonating within the wood long after the string itself has gone silent, filling this hollow body with music.