thexiffy

Last.fm last recent tracks from thexiffy.

Speedy J - Pannik Rmx

Speedy J

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

US Cyber Agency Is Using Anthropic's Mythos To Audit Government Code

CISA is reportedly using Anthropic's Mythos model to scan government code repositories for security vulnerabilities, with sources saying the audits have already found numerous bugs. Reuters reports: The scanning is being done by CISA's Attack Surface Evaluation team, according to one of the sources. The team is a group within CISA that conducts digital security assessments and hacking exercises across government. Two of the sources said the audits had already uncovered a large number of vulnerabilities but did not elaborate. Reuters could not establish exactly how much government code the team had gone through or the nature or severity of the bugs it discovered.

[...] The National Security Agency, the U.S. government's powerful eavesdropping agency, has been using Mythos as far back as April despite the blacklist, Axios has reported. Late last month, the New York Times said that NSA analysts had been testing Mythos in classified settings and coming away impressed with its capabilities. But when Anthropic rolled out a public version of Mythos called Fable, which included what it described as cybersecurity safeguards, the White House suddenly demanded that it ban foreigners from running it. This triggered a global shutdown of the model that was lifted only last week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Formula 1 News

Formula 1® - The Official F1® Website

Wolff admits Russell is still not ‘gelling with the car’

Toto Wolff has recognised that George Russell isn’t fully comfortable with his Mercedes challenger, even after finishing on the podium at the British Grand Prix.

How Ferrari and McLaren continued to push development boundaries

Ferrari and McLaren continued to press on with developments, with more items introduced at Silverstone.

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Enterprise AI still smarting from leaping before looking

The majority of companies that deploy AI systems end up shooting themselves in the foot with security, according to DigiCert. Seventy-eight percent of enterprises report "experiencing AI-related security incidents or identifying AI-related vulnerabilities," the digital identity biz said in a commissioned survey. Among respondents, 27.7 percent experienced one incident, 21.9 percent experienced multiple incidents, and 28.4 percent had no incidents but identified vulnerabilities, a company spokesperson told The Register. Incident details were not disclosed, but they were caused by AI agents that were unauthorized or misconfigured rather than flaws arising from AI-generated code. Consistent with its business focus, DigiCert attributes the survey's findings to lack of AI governance. "We wouldn’t allow an employee to operate without a verified identity," said DigiCert CEO Amit Sinha in a statement. "AI agents should be no different." That's become a common refrain. There are several initiatives underway to establish identifiers for bots, such as Private Access Control Tokens (PACTs), Estonia's digital IDs for agents, and Microsoft's Agent ID. But bot badging infrastructure remains a work-in-progress, leaving AI agents to run amok in many organizations. DigiCert's findings [PDF] echo a similar report two weeks ago from Spacelift that found 93 percent of organizations experienced AI-caused infrastructure incidents while only 19 percent had a governance plan in place. The survey stands in stark contrast with picks-and-shovels seller Nvidia's State of AI 2026 report, which gushes, "Across every industry, AI is helping increase annual revenue and drive down annual costs while boosting productivity." The DigiCert Q&A involves responses from 1,001 IT and cybersecurity leaders in the US, UK, and Australia, from various businesses. The survey shows that businesses are deploying AI first and asking questions later. While 90 percent of organizations surveyed have discussed AI governance at the board level, just 50 percent have dedicated AI governance budgets and formal governance programs. This allows operational blind spots to persist. Just 53 percent of respondents said their organization could trace AI decisions back to the models and source data that produced those results. "That becomes a problem the moment an AI system produces an unexpected or controversial result," the report says. "Customers, executives, and regulators will all ask, 'Why did it do that?'" And perhaps at some point, companies will ask, why did we deploy that? ®

DRAM prices are killing the cheap smartphone

Rising memory prices are making budget smartphones commercially unviable to produce, forcing users to delay upgrades, pay more for higher-tier devices, or turn to the second-hand market instead. This is according to analyst Omdia, which estimates memory costs accounted for almost 60 percent of the total bill of materials in sub-$400 smartphones during calendar Q1 of 2026 – and things haven't improved since then. In fact, market watcher TrendForce predicted last month that the tech industry will see DRAM prices jump by another 50 percent or more in 2026, making it almost impossible for budget device makers to avoid passing on the component cost hike. To offset rising memory costs, manufacturers have tried switching to cheaper display panels, sensors, or radio frequency (RF) modules – but low-end phones are already built on such a tight cost structure that there's little room left to cut. As with entry-level PCs, this means vendors can no longer supply them at a price to satisfy cost-conscious buyers, and sales are already declining. Omdia expects sub-$400 smartphone shipments to drop 22 percent year-on-year in 2026. For other segments, where memory doesn't account for such a large proportion of the bill of materials, manufacturers have room to make trade-offs. Omdia believes that while the total global smartphone market will decline by 12 percent in 2026, the above-$400 segments will remain resilient and are actually expected to see shipments grow 5.7 percent. In response, smartphone makers are shifting production priority toward mid-to-high-end phones. For devices priced above $600, higher-performance system-on-chip (SoC) components, displays, and camera units account for a larger share of the total cost, giving vendors room to trim spending elsewhere and absorb some of the memory cost burden. Omdia says China-based manufacturers are reverting to LTPS (low-temperature polycrystalline silicon) display panels in some models that upgraded to the newer LTPO (low-temperature polycrystalline oxide) tech, reserving the latter for premium models. This can save $3 to $5 per device. Other trade-offs include reducing the number of cameras, using smaller image sensors, or switching to previous-generation SoCs, which can reduce costs by around 30 to 40 percent. In other words, buyers can expect to get a less capable device than they might previously have expected at a given price point this year, all thanks to the AI bubble causing a run on memory chips. Small wonder that memory manufacturers such as Samsung are raking in the cash, while consumers pay the price. It's also no surprise that buyers are choosing to hold onto smartphones for longer, with an average lifetime of 4.2 years – a figure expected to stretch out to 4.7 years before the end of the decade. The market for pre-owned phones is also growing, with a 12 percent increase in trade forecast for this year as many consumers seek to get a more premium device at a lower price. ®

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Act soon to change ‘unsustainable’ direction of UK debt, OBR warns

Forecaster says curtailing rising costs such as health and pensions ‘are today’s challenge, not just tomorrow’s’

Policymakers must act to prevent public debt rising unsustainably in coming decades as the population ages and defence spending rises, the government’s independent economic forecaster has said.

In a fresh illustration of the challenges facing the prime minister in waiting, Andy Burnham, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said that without government action “debt would move on to what would be an unsustainable, ever-upward path from around the 2040s”.

Continue reading...

United Airlines must face lawsuit over 'window seats' that lack windows

Passengers say they paid extra for outside views but were seated beside blank cabin walls instead

A federal judge on Monday rejected United Airlines’ bid to dismiss a lawsuit ⁠by passengers who complained they paid extra money to sit in window seats – only to discover their seats ⁠had no actual windows.

US district judge ​James Donato in San Francisco rejected United’s defense that “window” referred to the location of a seat relative to the ⁠cabin wall and aisle, and the carrier also contended it never contractually promised that seats in the window position would have views outside.

Continue reading...

Belgium unites to enjoy national team’s World Cup success over USA and Trump

  • Fans across Belgium watched 4-1 win in early hours

  • Victory ‘a real slap in the face for Trump and Infantino’

Belgium fans reacted with jubilation after the national team trounced the USA in a World Cup game that was overshadowed by the controversy over Donald Trump’s lobbying to overturn the suspension of the striker Falorin Balogun.

Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, has yet to comment on the national team’s triumph, but the official Instagram account of his cat offered a sardonic, albeit indirect sign of satisfaction. Maximus, De Wever’s beloved cat, was shown lying on a rug holding a soft toy in the image of the US president. “I slept really well last night. And you?” reads the speech bubble in Dutch.

Continue reading...

‘It still haunts me’: the puppet show Dracula that’s definitely not for small children

The dreaded bloodsucker will be getting his fangs into the Edinburgh fringe this year – in a deeply creepy, liberty-taking show with a sisterly twist. We meet its director

Who is your Dracula? Max Schreck’s toothy Nosferatu, Bela Lugosi in a tux, the lantern-jawed host of Hotel Transylvania? This notorious shapeshifter “exists for us even before we know who he is” says theatre director Yngvild Aspeli, who is bringing a puppet bloodsucker to the Edinburgh fringe this summer. “There were stories of vampires long before Bram Stoker but he gave new life to them.”

After watching her deeply creepy show Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, that eerily waxen, lifesized puppet has for me become as indelible as top-hatted Gary Oldman or gorily grinning Christopher Lee. It matches Jonathan Harker’s assessment of the count in Stoker’s novel: “The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.” I saw the show on tour in Paris several months ago and it still haunts me: I could swear this Drac disintegrated then reappeared before my eyes, such is the technical sophistication of Aspeli’s French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire. Thanks in part to Emilie Nguyen’s spectral lighting, stunning transformations take place, with the actors and puppets frequently becoming indistinguishable.

Continue reading...

New York man sues ICE for sending officers to his house after he emailed agency head

David Streever had emailed acting ICE director after an immigration officer fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good

An upstate New York resident sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for sending federal officers to his house with a warning over an email he sent to the agency’s one-time head.

David Streever, who is a US citizen, was on a trip to Finland when two officers showed up to his Rochester home in June and presented his wife with a warning notice informing him that the email he sent months earlier was considered a threat, his attorneys said. Streever sent the email in January to Todd Lyons, then the acting director of ICE, after an immigration officer fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good in a confrontation caught on video during an anti-ICE demonstration.

Continue reading...

The Invite welcomes heterosexual polyamory into cinemas. It’s about time

As a non-monogamist, it’s refreshing to see a film that reflects modern attitudes to non-conventional relationships, instead of using them as a punchline or cautionary tale

What is the chief obstacle that must be overcome in most modern-day big-screen romcoms? Lack of attraction? Misaligning schedules? Or, perhaps, heteromonogamy? If that wasn’t the dominating norm of human relationships, many movie plots would be much swifter to resolve. What if Elizabeth Olsen didn’t have to choose between Callum Turner and Miles Teller in Eternity? Or Twilight allowed Bella to be in a throuple with Edward and Jacob? Even though both films have fantasy narratives, their predestined outcome is as real as it gets – a man and a woman (re)marry and live happily ever after.

For a long time, alternative relationship structures were relegated to fan fiction, undeserving of mainstream fictional representations where conflict and resolution are both inscribed in coupledom. Even the films that challenged mononormativity, such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, sustain the cautionary tale: opening up your relationship will eventually break it. As a practising non-monogamist, I yearn to see my values represented on screen as something more than a cautionary tale. Recently, the love triangles of Past Lives (implied) and Challengers (consummated) have suggested that perhaps Hollywood itself may be opening up. Then came The Invite, a poly-romcom just in time for the Week of Visibility for Non-monogamy.

Continue reading...

Fresh doubt over Marine Le Pen presidential bid as court orders electronic tag

Court shortens electoral ban but custodial sentence could complicate far-right leader’s campaign hopes

A French court of appeal has upheld Marine Le Pen’s ⁠conviction ⁠for embezzling European parliament funds but shortened her ban ⁠on running for elected office, potentially reopening a narrow path for the far-right ​leader ‌to run ‌in the 2027 presidential race.

However, ‌the court also handed Le Pen a three-year jail term, with two years suspended and one year in which she must wear ​an electronic ankle tag for monitoring. This could make a presidential campaign politically ⁠and logistically difficult.

Continue reading...

Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

Oud-burgemeester krijgt cel voor kinderporno, gemeente haalt straatnaambord weg

De rechter heeft de oud-burgemeester van Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, Herman J., veroordeeld voor het bezit en verspreiden van kinderporno. Hij krijg een jaar cel, waarvan vier maanden voorwaardelijk. Voor ontucht was er niet genoeg bewijs. J. zou zich aan een jongere man hebben vergrepen in de periode tussen 2005 en 2016, dus deels toen hij nog burgemeester was.

404 Media

404 Media is an independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox.

Scientists Gave Mice Cocaine. This Is What It Did to Their Brains

Scientists Gave Mice Cocaine. This Is What It Did to Their Brains

Just one exposure to cocaine produces changes to the brains of mice that persist for at least two weeks, and perhaps longer, according to research that will be presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026 on Tuesday. 

The results suggest that cocaine, a popular drug used by an estimated 25 million people around the world, may rewire the genomes inside cells of the brain’s reward system, called dopaminergic neurons. The finding that could shed light on the mechanisms that drive addiction, and possibly inform treatments in humans.  

People can become hooked to cocaine the first time they try it, but it is far more common for addiction to set in on repeated exposures. Decades of research has identified many of the neurochemical pathways activated by cocaine, but much less is known about the disruptive impacts, also known as brain “insults,” on the genomes inside neurons. 

“We essentially knew there were some unknown phenomena that were going on in the dopaminergic neurons that were not clear,” said Ana Pombo, Bloomberg distinguished professor of biology at Johns Hopkins University, and guest group leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, in a call with 404 Media. 

“We were actually interested to know if there is any long-term memory [of exposure], and this has not been studied,” continued Pombo, who presented her team’s research on Tuesday at FENS, Europe’s largest neuroscience meeting. “There's virtually no data we know of looking two weeks after this first exposure. Our experimental design was a shot in the dark.”

Like almost all cells, neurons contain copies of the genome, a genetic sequence unique to each individual organism that folds in complex structures. To observe cocaine’s impacts on the structure of the genome, Pombo and her colleagues studied the neurons of mice exposed to cocaine compared to a control group of unexposed mice. The team used an approach called genome architecture mapping that identifies where parts of the genome are in close proximity, or touch each other, which captures critical information about changes to its overall structure. 

After 24 hours, the genomes of the exposed mice showed several changes relative to the control group. Even more significantly, some of those shifts were still present after two weeks. The experiment hints that one cocaine exposure is enough to imprint long-term injuries into the genome, which may prime the brain for a stronger addictive response to the drug on a second exposure. 

“This would be like a silent injury, where the genome is altered,” Pombo said. “It looks like everything is normal, the mouse or the animal is going about its life, but if another exposure came along, it would have much more consequences.” 

The experiment exposed cocaine’s impact on the brain at the genome level, but it also raises a host of other questions, such as how long these changes last and how they vary between individuals and species. To that end, the team are working toward repeating the experiment on longer timescales, such as six months or more, as well as with different animals.

“There’s going to be some elements of stochasticity,” Pombo said. “Each individual may respond slightly differently, depending maybe also on the time of the day, what's going on, or what's happened the day before.”

“The big question for us, where we believe we can contribute is really understanding the susceptibility, and trying to shed light on why some individuals become addicted and many don't,” she continued. “So many people that get exposed to cocaine don't become addicted. Only a small portion do. Why does this happen?” 

The more scientists learn about the underlying mechanisms, the more they can parse that question—and perhaps, figure out ways to reverse the injuries done to the brain to help treat addiction.

“By looking at what parts of the genome are altered, we can identify candidate mechanisms that drive the alteration,” Pombo concluded. “We can also hypothesize ways in which it would be possible to somehow revert or encourage the system, at least the nuclear part, to reverse to the original status.” 


Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Duitse brouwers produceren recordhoeveelheid alcoholvrij bier

BERLIJN (ANP) - Duitse brouwerijen hebben vorig jaar een recordhoeveelheid alcoholvrij bier geproduceerd. De productie van bier zonder alcohol steeg met 6,5 procent naar 616 miljoen liter, meldt het Duitse federale statistiekbureau. Tegelijkertijd daalde de productie van bier met alcohol met bijna 6 procent tot 6,8 miljard liter.

Ondanks de groei van alcoholvrij bier blijft de productie van bier met alcohol dus nog altijd veel groter. De cijfers wijzen wel op een verandering in het drinkgedrag van consumenten. Volgens het statistiekbureau kiezen steeds meer mensen, vooral jongeren, voor alcoholvrije alternatieven vanwege een gezondere levensstijl. Daarnaast drukken hogere kosten voor levensonderhoud op de bestedingen aan alcohol. Daarmee sluit de ontwikkeling in Duitsland aan bij een bredere wereldwijde daling van de alcoholconsumptie.

Die ontwikkeling heeft drankproducenten de afgelopen jaren fors onder druk gezet en gedwongen hun kosten te verlagen en hun assortiment aan te passen.


kottke.org

Jason Kottke's weblog, home of fine hypertext products

New Patricia Lockwood for the London Review of Books: A...

New Patricia Lockwood for the London Review of Books: A Tradcath Wedding. “He pronounced the word ‘nuptial’ as noopt-see-all. If that’s correct, never tell me.”

The Lone Star Lady

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

The Lone Star Lady

Found Photograph

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Found Photograph

De Speld

Uw vaste prik voor betrouwbaar nieuws.

Superknecht haalt blusdekens voor de hele ploeg

In de Tour de France zijn het vaak de kopmannen die alle aandacht opeisen, maar voor de echte heldenverhalen moet je bij de renners zijn die zich wegcijferen voor die kopmannen. Zo bewijst ook deze superknecht, die in de derde etappe van de Ronde van Frankrijk blusdekens haalde voor de hele ploeg.

“Dit is heroïsch”, jubelde wielercommentator Karsten Kroon toen de knecht zich liet afzakken om bij de ploegleiderswagen de dekentjes op te halen. Met zijn handen vol dekentjes keerde de held vervolgens terug in het peloton om stuk voor stuk zijn teamgenoten te voorzien van het vuurwerende voorwerp.

Uiteindelijk liepen de collega’s van de heldhaftige knecht en de renner zelf slechts tweedegraads brandwonden op, waardoor de volledige ploeg vandaag gewoon kan opstappen in etappe 4.

&