LONDEN (ANP) - De Britse omroep ITV heeft zijn media- en entertainmentdivisie verkocht aan Sky, een dochteronderneming van Comcast. Dat hebben de twee bedrijven maandag aangekondigd. Met de deal is een bedrag van 1,6 miljard pond (zo'n 1,9 miljard euro) gemoeid.
Volgens Sky Group ondergaat het Britse medialandschap een "ingrijpende en snelle transformatie". "Nu de concurrentie om kijkers toeneemt, is schaalgrootte belangrijker dan ooit om in het Verenigd Koninkrijk de strijd aan te kunnen gaan met wereldwijde streaminggiganten en YouTube", aldus het bedrijf in een persbericht.
"Door Sky en ITV Media & Entertainment samen te brengen, wordt het allerbeste van gratis televisie, betaaltelevisie en streaming gecombineerd, zodat kijkers in het Verenigd Koninkrijk in een snel veranderende wereld kunnen blijven genieten van uitstekende Britse programma's", zegt topvrouw Dana Strong.
De overeenkomst gaat niet over productietak ITV Studios. Dat blijft een zelfstandig productiebedrijf dat onder meer programma's maakt voor de gecombineerde organisatie van ITV en Sky.
ALMERE (ANP) - Financieel directeur Chris Figee van telecomconcern KPN stapt over naar chiptoeleverancier ASMI. Dat maakten beide bedrijven maandag bekend in afzonderlijke persberichten. Figee verlaat KPN per 1 november.
Figee is sinds 1 februari 2020 financieel topman en bestuurslid van KPN. De raad van commissarissen van KPN gaat op korte termijn op zoek naar zijn opvolger. Figee start in eerste instantie als uitvoerend vicepresident speciale projecten bij ASMI. In deze functie rapporteert hij aan topman Hichem M'Saad van ASMI en werkt hij samen met rvc-voorzitter Pauline van der Meer Mohr.
De benoeming van Figee tot financieel directeur en bestuurslid van ASMI zal ter goedkeuring worden voorgelegd aan de aandeelhouders tijdens de algemene aandeelhoudersvergadering, die naar verwachting in maart 2027 plaatsvindt. Hij volgt dan huidig financieel directeur Paul Verhagen van ASMI op.
Verhagen heeft eerder al aangegeven na afloop van zijn tweede termijn in mei 2027 met pensioen te gaan.
AMSTERDAM (ANP) - ING neemt een minderheidsbelang van ongeveer 40 procent in de Spaanse vermogensbeheerder Singular Bank. Daarmee wil de bank zijn groei in private banking en vermogensbeheer in de Spaanse markt versnellen.
ING meldt niet hoeveel geld met de deal gemoeid is. De bank neemt het belang over van de Amerikaanse investeringsmaatschappij Warburg Pincus, die momenteel 93 procent van de aandelen bezit. De deal wordt naar verwachting in het eerste kwartaal van 2027 afgerond, onder voorbehoud van goedkeuringen door toezichthouders.
Singular Bank biedt verschillende producten en diensten aan vermogende particulieren aan. In een verklaring noemt ING het bedrijf "een toonaangevende bank, met ongeveer 19 miljard euro aan beheerd vermogen". Singular Bank blijft volgens ING onder leiding staan van Javier Marín.
Vorige maand meldde de Spaanse zakenkrant Cinco Días al dat ING werkt aan een overnamebod op de vermogensbeheerder.
The 29-year-old forward always avoided attention, but his World Cup goals have dragged him into the centre of the conversation
We have to talk about Mikel Oyarzabal. When Spain scored their third goal against Austria in Los Angeles, cameras caught Lamine Yamal’s little brother celebrating, fists clenched and shouting “come on!”. The picture couldn’t have been more perfect, and not just because Keyne is impossibly cute. Even the apparent imperfection was just right. On the row below, clapping and half-hiding the three-year-old, was a woman in sunglasses, prompting a Spanish TV commentator to post: “The blonde in front has denied us the best sticker of all time.” To which the striker Borja Iglesias replied: “The blonde in front has given you two goals today, my friend.”
Turns out the blonde woman is Oyarzabal’s mum: her name is Dorleta and it was her son who had just scored his second goal of the game and his fourth of the tournament. Two days later, after the Selección had finished their first training session in Dallas, Marca asked Oyarzabal if he had seen the footage.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision ‘issue’
‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre
What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?
A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor’s worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found.
When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire – built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita – would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030.
Continue reading...Yes, digesting food requires energy, but you need to do more than snack for a meaningful impact
It helps to understand what people mean when they talk about “metabolism”, says James Betts, professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath. Usually, they’re referring to metabolic rate; the amount of energy your body burns in a given time. This is largely determined by factors such as your size, age, sex and body composition.
Your daily energy expenditure comes from three main sources: your resting metabolism (the energy needed to keep your organs and tissues functioning), the calories burned processing food, and physical activity. Of those, exercise and movement are by far the most variable.
Continue reading...Australian government confirms it was informed by China of its intent to conduct the test on Monday
China has conducted a long-range missile test in the South Pacific, in a move the Australian government condemned as “destabilising to the region” and which was also criticised by other regional leaders.
A test missile topped with a dummy warhead landed in “designated waters” of the Pacific, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday. The missile test was a “routine arrangement” of China’s annual military training, with prior notification to relevant countries, Xinhua said.
Continue reading...Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
As the US took this weekend to celebrate their complicated relationship with tyranny, we reach back through the archives for another story of tyrants. If you think about it, the Declaration of Independence is basically the same thing as quitting without notice. Original --Remy
It was Steve's first week on the job, and he had plenty of questions about the code base and the new features he was supposed to implement. He muddled through for most of the week, but Friday morning he hit a brick wall and needed to talk to Bill, the architect.
"Can I meet with you for like an hour to go over things?" Steve asked.
"No."
"Can I get half an hour then? I h-"
"No. Company meeting, every Friday, 12-5pm. It should be on your calendar. I'll forward the invite."
Bill also couldn't free up time in the morning, so that meant Steve was stuck until Monday afternoon. Still, it probably wasn't all bad. He assumed that since this was a small company, in startup mode, it was going to be one of those meetings that was less meeting and more party. He had heard about one company in town that had a kegger every Friday afternoon.
Steve really should have known better. During his interview, the actual technical questions were thin on the ground. It focused more on "soft skills", like time management. He fielded a lot of questions about how best to manage his time. The other question that really stuck out in his mind was the standard, "Have you ever had to deal with a difficult personality in the workplace? How did you deal with it?" It was memorable, less because the question itself was unusual, but because at least six variations of the same question showed up in the interview.
On his very first day, he learned who the difficult personality was: Frank, the boss and grand-high pooba of the dev team. Around 2PM Frank lumberghed himself into Steve's cube. "Yeah, we've got a little problem," Frank said. "I've noticed you spending a great deal of time in the break room."
"Oh, yeah, I was just going back for more coffee," Steve said with an awkward laugh. "You know how it is with programmers- we're fueled by caffeine."
"Yeah, well, if you could just go ahead and make sure you're at your desk doing work, that would be great."
As it turned out, Frank had gone easy on Steve because it was Steve's first day. The next day, Steve sat in on Bill's planning meeting- a 4-hour marathon to organize the development backlog and parcel out work. Halfway through, Bill called for a break. He and a few other co-workers darted outside to gradually commit suicide via cancer, while everybody else hung around the room committing suicide by donut. And then Frank walked in.
"What's happening?"
"It's um… just a little break," one of the devs replied. "Bill's outside."
"I see." Frank loitered in the room until Bill returned. The instant Bill's foot crossed the threshold of the meeting room, Frank's human facade was stripped away, and a spitting, slavering demon replaced him. He proceeded to dress Bill down, back up and right back down for disrespecting his team, disrespecting the company, disrespecting Frank and Frank's poor elderly mother with his attitude. He closed with, "They're developers and I want them sitting around and developing! Not waiting for you to finish your smoke breaks!"
On Thursday, Steve got to drive a meeting to show off the latest batch of features the dev team had completed. When he turned on the projector, Frank asked, "What's wrong with your computer?"
"Um… nothing?"
"The desktop is wrong! None of the icons are in the right place!"
Like most developers, Steve had changed the wallpaper and reorganized his desktop to suit his working style. Unfortunately, his transgression against the default desktop settings set Frank off on a long rant that consumed the entirety of the meeting. Steve was lucky, Frank claimed, that he wasn't fired on the spot. Standard work was vitally important, and personalization was frowned upon. "It's vitally important that any developer can use any other developer's computer- we can't afford to waste a minute of time just because you needed to be a special little snowflake!"
By the time the Friday afternoon meeting rolled around, Steve should have been expecting some kind of Frank-led time management course. Instead, Bill handed him a mop. "New blood gets mop duties. Start in the break room, and then hit the other common areas."
"Excuse me?"
"Frank's orders. Every Friday, we spend the afternoon cleaning the office, from top to bottom."
"There isn't a cleaning crew?"
"Oh, there is," Bill said. "Frank doesn't trust them to do a good job." That weekend, Steve decided to take Frank's lessons on time management to heart, and immediately left to seek employment that didn't involve wasting his time.
Terwijl heel de wereld naar de oorlog op het voetbalveld tussen Mexico en Engeland keek, bestookte de Russen de Oekraïense hoofdstad Kiev in een nieuwe, bloedige episode uit het Slavische Slachthuis. Bij een massale aanval met ballistische raketten en drones werden meerdere gebouwen, waaronder een wooncomplex (zie hierboven), vernietigd met als resultaat dat er volgens de Kyiv Independent minstens 10 doden vielen en tientallen mensen gewond raakten. Net als bij eerdere Russische aanvallen had Zelensky al gewaarschuwd voor de verwoestende Russische agressie, die plaatsvindt net voor de aankomende NAVO-top in Turkije. Drie keer raden wat daar hoog op de agenda staat: het beëindigen van deze oorlog. Trump zal dus wel een hartig woordje met Zelensky spreken over de Russische aanval of Infantino een en ander laten regelen, en anders kan de vredespresident altijd nog tijd maken voor een verhandeling over Zelensky's garderobe. Hoe dan ook: meer gruwelbeelden uit het Slavische theater hieronder.
De volledige 3 uur van gisteren ter ere van Bob Rusche is terug te luisteren via https://www.concertzender.nl/programma/xrated_892548/